faderiftooc | GAME UPDATES: May 2024

GAME UPDATES: MAY

OOC & ADMIN UPDATES

Notable Dates

Applications: Open indefinitely
Leadership Applications: Due at the end of the month
Test Drive Meme: Here! Tracking the post for new top-level comments strongly encouraged.
Activity Check for April-June: Early July

War Table

As a reminder, the new War Table system is in place, and war table assignments are available to claim at any time! You can review available assignments on the wiki and claim them on this post. As detailed in our last full-length SotG post, we're also going to begin taking the missions characters complete into account as IC indicators of expertise/experience when choosing participants for plots with limited slots, and reports for any missions conducted during the AC period should now be linked in AC comments.

IC & PLOT UPDATES

Mod Plot Aftermath

A quick recap of the events that took place and what's ICly known to all at this point:

TEVINTER: Tevinter is now officially and openly under the rule of Corypheus himself, rather than him remaining quietly in control from behind the scenes and through layers of intermediaries while things appear business as usual as he has for the last several years. The Archon, Ilrian Amladaris, publicly swore allegiance to the Elder One and gave a speech about having come to the realization that a more powerful leader is needed who can truly restore the Imperium to glory.

This announcement came just after an explosion at the Magisterium, said to be an attack by 'enemies of the Imperium' seeking to weaken the Venatori and prevent the Elder One's glorious ascension. According to public statements by the new government, this attack backfired and primarily killed the perpetrators in the chamber—evidence of the Elder One's favor on the Venatori.

Coordinated with the announcement was a widespread rounding-up of alleged enemies of the Imperium, ranging from powerful anti-Venatori magisters to some average citizens said to have been involved in anti-Venatori activity or opposition to the war. Some were killed while trying (allegedly or actually) to resist/flee, while others, especially those with powerful connections, were arrested and are believed to be imprisoned. Even the Tevinter Chantry did not escape—the Black Divine was arrested as well, deposed and replaced by a Venatori priest.

Despite the arrests, Riftwatch's network in the city remains largely intact—some informants and members of allied groups were lost, but they seem to have mostly flown under the radar this time and after a cautious interval it seems the safe house where the eluvian is located remains secure. Work in Minrathous continues, it just requires even more caution than usual as this new state of affairs develops, but it is hoped that this turn of events may actually galvanize resistance and push public opinion in Tevinter (and the Anderfels) in a more helpful direction.

ELSEWHERE: Venatori attacks similar to the one on Kirkwall also took place in Val Royeaux and Val Chevin, the Inquisition base at Griffon Wing Keep, the Exalted March encampment, Antiva City, Ostwick, Hunter Fell, and Orzammar. Enemies were sighted over Denerim and Skyhold, but did not attack.

With the death of Viscount Bran Cavin in the attack on Kirkwall, Varric Tethras has returned to the city and taken on the role of interim Viscount to manage the clean-up and rebuilding.

As the news has reached the rest of Thedas, and the dust of the attacks has settled enough for the victims to turn their attention elsewhere, there has been a general condemnation from most leaders of the Venatori takeover and the idea of some sort of would-be god. The only exceptions of note are the Anderfels, where the Venatori viceroy expressed immediate allegiance to the Elder One; Rivain, which remains too inwardly focused to say anything on the matter just yet; and Wycome, where Duke Arissian has made only a noncommittal statement denouncing the harms of wild gossip and propaganda and implied that he will wait and form his own opinion of the new ruler of Tevinter.

Gallows Changes

Last SotG we announced some Gallows upgrades, now we've got downgrades!

As the mod plot hopefully made clear, the damages suffered by the Gallows as a result of the enemy attack were severe. The mage tower is a total loss and the templar tower has suffered significant structural damage rendering it unfit for occupation, while the central tower requires some repairs to its uppermost floor/the eyrie but is otherwise pronounced safe, with access to the library and various work areas available.

And great news, both the lift and the tavern, along with any other previously-purchased upgrades, have survived with minor cosmetic damage at most.

Riftwatch's first priority is rebuilding and repairing the remaining residential tower (the former templar tower) to make it habitable again. Between limited resources and the extremely high demand in the city for builders just now, the project isn't going to be finished as quickly as anyone might've hoped. In the meantime, the remains of the tower aren't structurally sound and will soon be crawling with builders besides, so entry will only be allowed as necessary to facilitate the reconstruction or for a brief period to retrieve essential personal possessions. No one can sleep there, or eat or bathe in the lower levels.

So Riftwatch members who reside in the Gallows will need to continue to camp out in the Gallows grounds for the next month or two. Luckily, weather is warming, and the towers can be stifling in summer anyway, so it's not so terrible a prospect. Tents are available for any who need them, and plenty of mattresses have been salvaged. An outdoor kitchen and communal dining area has been set up, along with temporary bathing facilities. Characters setting up camps in closets, nooks, or offices in the Central Tower (or claiming the unoccupied apartments in the warehouse Riftwatch maintains on the docks) won't be prohibited if anyone is so allergic to the outdoors that RPing them having to do some communal camping wouldn't be fun.

To facilitate knowing who your temporary neighbors are or where to find your CR, we've added a page to the Housing Spreadsheet for everyone to note their living arrangements for this period. We also added some color (kind of?) coding to the old Housing sheet: the dark grey areas are gone, and the light grey are standing but presently uninhabitable.

IC Leader Updates

Several new appointments this month, and an announcement about an experimental trial of a new leadership style.

Marcus Rowntree will be stepping in as Forces Division Head after Flint's departure. ICly, the initial announcement (coming soon) will be that he is helping cover the role in an interim capacity while Flint is busy elsewhere, but OOC this is an official long-term appointment.
Isaac will take over as Head of Special Acquisitions.

Due to Marcus's move, the Captain of the Guard role is now open to applications—ICly it might also at first be talked about as temporary cover until Flint comes back, but will also be an official appointment with no actual expected expiration date.

As always, a list of all available roles is on the wiki. If you're potentially interested and have questions, feel free to toss them at the Mod Contact. Applications should be submitted here. The one exception is the Diplomacy Division Head role, which you can read more about below.

Additionally, if you want your character to be in charge of something but none of the open roles speak to you, you can take advantage of our new style of projects and create their very own task force to head up, focused on a plot thread or IC goal of your choosing, as a way to flex their IC leadership muscles.

Diplomacy Division: Lord of the Flies Edition

The Diplomacy Division Head role is now also vacant, but rather than accept applications for it right away we're going to leave it unfilled for a period of 3-6 months (1 or 2 AC periods) while we experiment on everyone like lab rats and temporarily try out a system of rotating representatives.

IC, what this will mean is that the Diplomacy Division will lack an official head–far from the first time a division has been in this situation, so that's not very dire. Its members will be responsible for divvying up work and making day to day decisions by committee, with members taking shifts covering the main desk to sort incoming work and make sure anything urgent is handled quickly. We expect that aspect to be largely handwaved, the way routine work typically is. But everyone is welcome to use their character's turn holding down the fort as an open log prompt or to organize division-wide meetings to discuss the assignment of basic tasks or updates on minor handwaved work. Any major administrative decisions (such as discipline, payroll matters, etc.) will go through the remaining three division heads, who'll also ICly have the authority to step in if the day to day work goes off the rails.

Meanwhile, Diplomacy will be sending a rotating representative to Div Head meetings to speak on behalf of the division as a whole. Most of these meetings are dull and handwaved, so they won't all be played out, but now and then one will be important enough to warrant IC or OOC discussion. Where possible (i.e., not an IC emergency that needs a response right this minute) this representative should take stock of what everyone in the division thinks about the items on the agenda first, including facilitating a vote or general consensus that they then bring to the discussion and try to honor. Making an IC choice not to do that and instead use their turn in the meeting to try to push a personal agenda is totally fine also, as long as you are prepared to RP whatever IC fallout results.

OOC, it will mean that when the Division Heads have an IC meeting or significant IC choice to make/handwave OOC, we'll RNG someone from Diplomacy to participate as the division's voice and participate in the meeting. We want to make sure we try this out with at least a couple people to get a feel for how it's working; we also don't want to assign someone as Boss for a Month and then have nothing of substance for them to do before their turn is up. So even though IC people would likely be assigned to a specific month or week in advance, we'll instead be OOC choosing the representatives ad hoc when an RPable moment arises and whoever is chosen will just be retconned into having been on the schedule as primary liaison that week. If it's workable for the given IC and OOC situation, the representative will have a few days before a meeting to confer with the rest of the division about what's on the agenda, which can be done by putting up either an IC discussion post or an OOC post for folks to convey what their characters would think.

All Diplomacy characters will have turns at this in a handwaved/background IC sense, but for the decisions we play out on screen, we’ll RNG. We'll reach out to whoever has been selected privately to see if you want to do it and have time that day/week to devote to it, so if you can't or don't want to, you'll be able to tell us so then.

This isn't permanent—not least because we don’t have an IC justification for this one division to be exempt from having a leader anymore and we can only stretch fake administrative delays in filling the job so far. It's only a way for us to try some things that we might want to implement in other situations/formats in the future, depending on how it goes in this smaller and temporary way. After we've played around with it a bit, we'll reopen applications for a permanent Diplomacy Division Head.