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faderiftooc2023-11-13 09:01 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderiftooc2023-11-13 09:01 pm
Entry tags:
MOD PLOT ↠ WAKING AND SLUMBERING
MOD PLOT: Waking and Slumbering
For this mod plot, Riftwatch will be heading to the Silent Plains at the invitation of the Chantry to assist with looking into a problem encountered by the forces of the Exalted March. It's a problem that will be familiar: shortly after the widespread, constant nightmares across the Free Marches stopped, they seem to have started up there instead. This has been a major contributing factor to a stall in the March's progress into Tevinter territory, due to both a loss of morale and an outbreak of abominations among the mage army. While attempting to resolve this problem, Riftwatch will also encounter the People of the Silent Plains–a rebel group of ex-slaves–and the local Dalish clan.
Riftwatch's efforts in the region will span a few weeks IC. It is fine for characters to come late, leave early, or return once (at most) to the Gallows in the midst of this time period to attend to other business; at least one Division Head and a skeleton crew will need to be present in the Gallows at all times. But for most this will be a long-term campout, rather than anyone popping in for only a few days at a time.
THINGS TO DO
There's an open log for this plot here that includes both work/mini-missions characters can go on and this year's (late, sorry!) Satinalia party. In addition to setting up your own top levels and side quests using the prompts in the open log, you can sign up to claim one of the following plot threads.
If you claim a plot thread, we'll give you some basic info you can use to write a mission. Your character will generally ICly be leading the mission in question, and you can choose what parts of it to focus on and set up threads for. We'll be available to answer questions, but there will also be some freedom to make up the details yourself. For example, if you claim the dragon thread, we'll tell you there's a dragon and provide some basic context about its capabilities and maybe location suggestions, but fleshing out the plan of attack, deciding what to RP, adding any mechanics to determine success or injuries, etc., will be up to you.
If there's a mission you really want to take that your character wouldn't be a logical choice to lead, for whatever reason, then as long as they're a reasonable choice for the team in general, you can create an NPC leader from among the Exalted Marchers (who can then die or be ineffective and require your character to step up, if you want).
Available plot threads:
- Dream Machine: Lead a team to finally identify and handle the source of the nightmares. A good leader for this mission will either have knowledge of magic/enchantment or have good tracking and infiltration skills. Or both.
Dragon Hunt: Lead a team to take out the dragon menacing the Exalted Marchers. A good leader for this will have combat prowess and perhaps prior experience hunting dragons or similar.Abomination Hunt: Lead a team to find and handle a wily abomination—the kind that still looks human and is able to blend in—before it does any further harm. It may also involve learning more about the March's actions in the area. A good leader for this will be a mage or Templar with abomination experience, anti-magic abilities, or be someone good at tracking people down, or both. This team must have at least one member with anti-magic abilities or spells.Tevinter Outreach: Lead a team to scope out (and ideally make nice with) a few nearby Tevinter villages that haven't yet been rolled over by the Exalted March and get a sense of their take on the March vs. the Venatori. A good leader for this will be someone who's able to act well enough to hang out in potentially hostile territory without dying, who's good at charm and persuasion, or both. Actual Tevinters or those who can pass as them would be good choices for this team, though whether this mission is approached openly (preaching the good news of Riftwatch) or through some form of subterfuge is up to its leader.Elven Outreach: Lead a team to liaise with the People of the Silent Plains and potentially meet with the Dalish clan that occupies the Silent Plains. A good leader for this is anyone with people skills, and it's highly advised that the leader either be an elf or bring at least one along to minimize the odds of being murdered on sight. (NPC elves count if necessary.)
For all of these missions, characters will be able to bring along NPCs borrowed from the Exalted March to fill in missing skill gaps–for example, if the PCs you assemble don't have anti-magic skills for the Abomination Hunt, you can create an NPC Templar or mage to accompany them–or to just beef up numbers for combat with red shirts. It's also fine to choose a single scene in the plot to RP about while handwaving the rest. So every mission should be achievable with only 2-3 player characters in a thread or two in the main post rather than needing to be big 5+ character multi-part productions. But you can do big 5+ character multi-part productions if you really want!
To claim one of these plot threads, you can reply here. They're first come, first served, but once we give you the info, you'll need to put up a starter within 3 days. If you can't/don't, we'll release the plot thread for someone else to claim. And if all of these get claimed and RP'd and people have the time and interest for more, please let us know and we may be able to supplement with additional plot threads.
NOTES
Best Behavior: While in the Silent Plains, Riftwatch will be working, camping, and for one night also partying alongside the Exalted March. While no one expects Riftwatch to pretend to be a group of devout Chantrygoers with no qualms whatsoever with the Chantry, everyone will be expected to behave with a certain amount of respect. Debating theology over the campfire is probably fine; throwing a copy of the Chant into the campfire is probably not. And this is not the Satinalia for Sexy Andraste costumes. If your character does make a scene or do something enormously offensive to the locals, let us know so we can discuss the potential IC consequences for both your character (who might be sent home, for example) and Riftwatch as a whole.
Accommodations: While at the main camp, Riftwatch is being housed in three barracks-sized tents. IC, these tents will be assigned. OOC, you can put them wherever you want—whether that means putting them with their besties and saying they swapped beds around to make that happen, or saying they were assigned a bed next to their worst enemy and no one would trade with them. You can sign up your character for one of these tents here.
NPCs: For some tasks in the open log, such as hunting abominations or dealing with the dragon, Riftwatch may be assigned to accompany units from the Chantry's army rather than to go alone. In these cases you're free and encouraged to make up NPCs as needed. With the context that the vast majority of these people will be human volunteers from Andrastian nations who believe to some extent in the Chantry's cause, Riftwatch might also work with mercenary bands who have been employed to assist or with people who are there because their liege is there and they didn't have much choice but to come along. You are free to use them as red shirts and have them die in combat and so on.
REWARDS
This is our first plot using our new reward system!
Rewards are earned by writing tags. Generally, unless we specify otherwise due to some particular plot mechanic, five log tags (from you, not total) per thread will earn a reward. Rewards are organized into tiers. You unlock a tier by completing the requisite number of threads within a single modplot. So if you do one thread that has at least five log tags from you, you unlock Tier 1. If you have two, you unlock Tier 2, etc. There are three tiers.
Everyone is limited to three rewards total. You can downgrade your rewards from the second or third tiers to lower tiers if the higher tier items don’t appeal to you (i.e. you've unlocked Tier 3 but you'd rather have two things from Tier 2 instead), but you can only ever have three rewards total per mod plot.
Rewards unique to this mod plot are starred. The deadline to claim any rewards for this plot is January 1, 2024. To claim a reward, reply here.
Tier 1
- Runes. You can acquire any one canonical runestone to add to your character's weapon or armor so their sword has fire or their armor is imbued with some magical protection.
- Rift items, gag/simple variety. Your character can find an item that came through a rift from another world, their own or not. Snack foods, posters of pop idols, underpants with elastic, etc. Things that are fun or sentimental but don't have much in the way of moving parts and won't generally be useful on missions.
- Weird pets. Bring home a monkey or a wolf. The pet must be something that can at least semi-realistically be either permanently contained (sharks in tanks, small rodents, etc.) and trained/tamed out of being dangerous to the general populace. No dragons.
- First anchor ability. If your character currently has a vanilla anchor, the anchor can develop either an offensive (shooting rift-energy projectiles) or defensive (generating a small rift-energy protective barrier) capability.
- ★ Ring of Extremes. A ring that provides mild resistance against both fire and ice damage. Available quantity: 1.
Tier 2
- Fade-touched materials. Your character can acquire materials that have been touched by the Fade and have them made into a weapon, armor, or other item that has special abilities. There's a list here.
- Half of a specialization. To reflect the time and effort it requires to actually learn a new specialization, acquiring a new one requires two rewards spread across two mod plots. You can use one of the canon specializations or create your own. If you create your own, put it in mod contact for us to review and approve.
- Mabari. A mabari can imprint on your character. How your character acquires the mabari—getting unwillingly adopted by an old one without a master, intentionally buying a puppy, etc.—is up to you.
- Weird mounts. A hart (or equivalent), dracolisk, or nuggalope.
- Second anchor ability. If your character has a first anchor ability (see Tier 1), you can now have the second one too.
- ★ Sandshoes. Enchanted boots from the Dalish clan living on the Silent Plains. The shoes use a form of telekinetic/force magic to essentially act as snowshoes, useful on both sand and snow, without the clumsy extra width/length of actual snowshoes. Available quantity: unlimited.
Tier 3
- Enchanted or legendary items. You can use named items from canon, invent your own named item from made-up Thedasosian history, or have an enchanted item of your own invention or discovery that doesn't have a name and/or former owner. These can be items that are useful in combat, like weapons and armor, but they don't have to be. E.g., a self-filling tea pot.
- Rift items (magical/useful/complex). Your character can come across an item from another world. This tier is for things more serious and useful than snacks and underwear. As a rule, advanced technology (if it is allowed at all) will be converted into something enchanted.
- Griffon tamer. Now that the griffons are breeding freely in the mountains around Kirkwall (and the existing griffons are reaching middle age), your character can befriend, tame, and ride a wild griffon that you invent and name yourself.
- Anchor upgrade. This reward is only available to characters who have had their anchors for more than nine months. With this upgrade anchor can grow to the size of the Herald’s anchor, allowing them to close rifts alone and exhibiting more powerful versions of the anchor abilities (if they have them).
- ★ Mirage Cloak. An enchanted cloak that produces a slight blurring effect, giving the impression (at an appropriate distance) that the wearer may just be a mirage. The effect works similarly in shadows and, especially, shifting firelight. The effect also makes people a little more difficult to accurately stab in combat. When unfurled and held still, it blends preternaturally well into its surroundings—not enough to make its wearer invisible, but enough to cause an uncritical eye to slide past, especially in dim light or at a distance. Available quantity: 1.
- ★ Sword of Nightmare Slaying. Enchanted swords held as precations by those guarding the Nightmare Machine (not its real name). The weapons are enchanted to do extra damage to Fade creatures, including the ability to essentially dispel/evaporate weaker demons like wisps and shades with a single blow. (The sword can instead be a mace, dagger, etc. depending on preferences of the claimer.) Available quantity: 3.
QUESTIONS
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Does runesmithing fall under a specialization or is it more involved than that?
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- For activity rewards, are the rewards by character or by player? I.e. If I didn't tag with Character A at all but did tag with Character, can I only buy a reward for Character B?
- Do yall need reports filed for the plot thread missions? If so, by when?
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Rewards can be for any of your characters, present or not.
Reports aren’t required, but if you would like to write one for RP purposes and/or to contribute toward the Gallows upgrades, you can whenever you feel like it. Otherwise we’ll wrap the outcome of the missions into our wiki write up of the plot as a whole and will reach out to people if we need help clarifying what happened.
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But thank you!
PLOT THREADS
We'll give you further information/context to help, then it'll be up to you to get things rolling. You'll need to get a starter up (just to get the ball rolling and demonstrate you are actually planning to RP about it) within three days of receiving the info. You'll have a lot of flexibility for how to handle these, so it's fine to do some planning before claiming one.
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Plot Thread: Dragon Hunt
Notes: 🏹
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Fighting her within her lair is an option, if Flint judges the risk of closer quarters to be worth taking away her ability to soar overhead and easily relocate on the field. Luring her out is also an option–with desert pickings being rather slim, she'll be easy to draw out with lures or even just some loud conversation between the potentially delicious humans. In either case, some number of drakes and dragonlings may come to her aid if/when she begins bellowing.
In addition to any PCs he brings along, Flint will have at his disposal (if he needs them) a sizable unit of Exalted Marchers. Archers and mages who can help from range will be more willing volunteers, but he can rustle up melee fighters as well if he makes a point of it, and you can kill or injure them to your heart's content.
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Plot Thread: Abomination Hunt
Notes: He can personally bring several anti-magic spells to the party
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Along the way, they'll also come across a small village around an oasis village that's been completely destroyed–shelters burned, no apparent survivors, the works. The damage obviously occurred too long ago for Giovenco to be responsible. Investigating the scene will reveal the village is devoid of food or valuables, and some discarded damaged armor or weaponry in fact points toward the Exalted March's forces.
In addition to PCs, Julius is free to recruit from the Exalted March to bulk up the numbers, with the caveat that Giovenco would be likely to recognize mages or Templars. It should be easy to find grunts without any striking facial features, though.
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Plot Thread: Tevinter Outreach
Notes: handing info from one of my hands into the other
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You can invent specific locations and determine the reception the team receives in those locations, but as an overall vibe, many people they encounter will be fretful about whether surrender is even an option or if they will be destroyed and slaughtered like (they say) has occurred elsewhere. They'll also encounter some people with political opinions on either end of the spectrum, but most people in these areas are herders and subsistence farmers with little knowledge or interest in what's going on in Minrathous. They might have luck making inroads in about half the places they visit.
The nightmare effects that occur when people venture further north into the Silent Plains won't be in effect here; they're not traveling far enough into the Plains for that. But as an added wrinkle, they may run into a party of disguised Tevinter scouts/spies who are trying to keep an eye on and possibly ambush them.
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Plot Thread: Elven Outreach
Notes: He's worked with the People of the Silent Plains once earlier in the year, and he is generally charismatic, but I might have the "leader" be an NPC elf if no PC elves are involved.
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This is a different cell than the one Jayce visited before, but as luck should have it, Irene is currently visiting them, so he will be recognized and met with good will by her, if tempered by wariness especially from others. The presence of the March has them on edge, and Irene wants assurances that the March doesn't intend to interfere with them or head further into the desert, and that they're causing the nightmares plaguing the area. She'll insist they're not responsible for the attack on the supply train—that was a Dalish clan in the area, hostile to outsiders including the People.
Riftwatch and the People can make attempts to track down the clan together, but other than fleeting sightings, an abandoned sand skimming-aravel, and some warning shots* zinged past their heads, the Dalish will remain elusive for now. Trying to leave a written message for them may be their best bet if they want to try that.
(* Warning shots are dependent on having an elf in the party. Jayce will be fine as the leader rather than deferring to an elf, but if any of the scouting parties coming close to the Dalish are all apparently human, the arrows might not miss.)
As they help with the search, Riftwatch will have the opportunity to spend a few days at the People's camp mingling with the two dozen or so members there, and could try to influence their opinion of the March and how its presence should be handled. The orders from the Division Heads are to ensure things remain peaceful, and ideally the People could be helpful, but if someone wanted to rile the elves up against the March instead, they'll have chances to do so.
Likewise, they'll have to decide how to communicate the problem to leadership back at the Exalted March. Bringing back some proof of the Dalish presence will keep the Exalted March from being hostile toward the People, but may make them interested in hunting down the Dalish clan to prevent further attacks. Letting the Exalted March continue to believe that the People were the ones attacking their caravan but have agreed not to do so again will prevent them from particularly wanting to hunt down anyone for the time being, but may cause problems further down the line if there are further attacks by the Dalish and the Exalted March believes the People have gone back on their word.
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Plot Thread: Dream Machine
Notes: [laughs in infiltration skills] he at least has a working knowledge of magic and tracking it, and has been invested and involved in the nightmare plague, so he's not the worst choice, still might have a poor npc to sacrifice for leadership tho
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The nearer they get to the ruin, the more frequent and vivid the manifestations will become, and for the last half-mile they will become intermittently corporeal, capable of dealing and suffering actual damage. (If their nightmares are things like a nuclear bomb going off where the damage they'd cause would be massive or zombies where they'd infect people, neither of those will happen for real. A nightmare explosion might sweep people of their feet with a 'blast wave' or cause burns, a zombie's teeth might give them a real wound, but it's all just spirits; the scope is only local and no one is going to be radioactive or infected at the end of the day. If the nightmare isn't of a type that would attack then it won't here either, at least at first, but it will haunt them in increasingly distressing and obstructive ways that may force them to violence, which will be responded to however they most dread.)
They'll have to fight through this onslaught to get to the machine concealed in the ruin, which proves to be a roughly 12'x12' contraption of metal and stone and red lyrium. Parts of it are recognizably dwarven in make, including a complicated mechanism that appears to be distributing blood into a pit full of red lyrium in a set pattern at a controlled rate, almost as if it has automated a ritual process. There are runes inscribed on much of it, not all of them recognizable, and their effects seem to interact in carefully calibrated ways. All of mechanical metalwork appears relatively new, despite the dust and pitting of recent desert exposure. Other portions of the device look much older, and are inscribed with what a scholar might recognize as a mix of ancient Tevene and archaic High Chantry Nevarran. The whole thing exudes magical energy, like a whisper teasing at the edge of hearing range. For mages and rifters the noise is louder, like the ever-present whispers of the Fade buzzing in their heads.
They will have to hold off the nightmares while the machine is deactivated. This is a process that must be intuited from its design and undertaken carefully and without interruption: the complexity of its workings and the various spell and rune and ritual interactions mean it's difficult to predict precisely what might happen if the process is interrupted or if the machine is damaged rather than deactivated, but there's a very good chance it could be some sort of catastrophic magical explosion that could tear the already-thinned Veil here and also kill all of them. Further complicating this process will be the arrival of the machine's minders, who for obvious reasons like to stay upwind out of its immediate range. Their arrival will be heralded by the arrival of their nightmares, which include a pack of giant spiders, a vicious acid-spitting dracolisk, and (both terrifying and surely embarrassing for the Venatori) Corypheus himself. The nightmares will fight everyone; the Venatori will do their best to ignore them and focus on fighting Riftwatch. The team will have to fight everything off long enough for the nerds to deactivate the machine, and then decide what to do with it.
REWARDS
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Character: Loki
Thread Link(s): 1. w/Clarisse
Reward Claimed: tier 1: weird pet: desert wolf edition
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Character: bastien
Thread Link(s): 1, 2, 3
Reward Claimed: diligence rune for bastien, ring of extremes for xio, enchanted rift item - an enchanted approximation of a portable amplifier with variable volume that amplifies whatever is in about a 6' cone behind it - for bastien.
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Character: Jayce
Thread Link(s): 1, 2, 3, 4
Reward Claimed: Tier 2: Half of a specialization: rune enchantment; Tier 1: First anchor ability, defensive; Tier 3:
SwordMace of Nightmare Slayingno subject
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Character: Desi & Wysteria & Flint
Thread Link(s): 1, 2, 3
Reward Claimed: Tier 3: Mirage Cloak (Desi), Tier 1: Weird Pet - a large non-venemous lizard similar to a chuckwalla (Wysteria), Tier 1: Tempest armor rune (Flint)
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Character: Viktor "That's Enough Sand" Tendercrisp
Thread Link(s): this and this
Reward Claimed: tier 2: half a spec: runic enchantment, babeyyy
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Character: Gwenaëlle Baudin
Thread Link(s): here
Reward Claimed: tier 1, a corruption rune to add to her favourite knife pls and ty.
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