WHO: Anyone! Everyone!
WHERE: Temple of Zazikel, in the Grand Necropolis, Nevarra
WHEN: June 28 or July 5 depending how this week goes
WHAT: A group of Riftwatch agents take a field trip back into the Temple of Zazikel, to do a more thorough examination of the Gate now that they're not distracted by half the team disappearing.

Little do they know their presence and the thinness of the Veil in that location have drawn the attention of a warped Spirit of Freedom, who will build upon the temple's chaotic, labyrinthine nature to create a series of personalized physical and emotional obstacles the team has to overcome to escape, to teach them the value of freedom achieved through struggle.

This plot is open to as many characters as you feel like and sign-ups are not required! The team will know ahead of time that the Necropolis, Temple, and Gate are unpredictable, so while the main purpose is research, it makes sense to send scouts, fighters, and even diplomats to liaise with Mourn Watch.

( DEETS WITHIN )

Questions? Come at me.

Hello! This is advanced notice that on December 20 I'm going to put up a player plot in which our heroes are once again trapped in prolonged shared and overlapping dreams they have to struggle their way out of with the power of friendship. This time they'll be dreams of a happy and comfortable future. Whether this imaginary future is actually satisfying to your character in the innermost layer of their soul onion is up to you—and it's not only fine but encouraged for wrongness to seep in at the edges and turn it into something more sinister as it goes on—but the spirit behind it will be doing its best to design a world where no external threats or obstacles are standing between them and a happily ever after. Within those parameters you can do anything you want!

It'll be open to everyone who wants to participate, no sign-ups or commitments required! Just giving everyone a head's up so you can think and plot out what scenario(s) you want to use instead of feeling pressured to come up with them on the spot. And I realize that five days before Christmas may not be the ideal timing for everyone, but by design the plot will be disjointed and not something anyone can actually be late to ✌️ so hop in whenever.

If you have questions while planning you can ask them here!

Hello friends & enemies. I'm running a player plot beginning September 29 wherein up to six lucky Riftwatchers will be captured, tossed in a fortress dungeon, maybe lightly tortured, and forced to try to escape while half-naked and hurt. Pretty straightforward stuff that is meant for CR development rather than moving any bigger plot point forward. Keywords: stealth, combat, hurt/comfort or hurt/suck it up dude we have to move.

To participate you have to agree to write one (1) NPC that everyone else might encounter during the escape. We'll also use a fortress map that I'll black out so the way out is revealed one room/space at a time as folks RP reaching those places, with dead ends possible. Aside from the info provided in advance on the map and my turn with an NPC I won't be GMing, so it'll require some willingness to take the available info and run with it.

Since I'm sending one of my guys, there are five other spots available. I'll backwards-engineer the specific purpose of the mission they were on when captured to suit the skills/makeup of the team, so anyone can sign up regardless of division or combat ability.

If more than five people are interested I'll RNG, with the non-random exception that characters who are already getting some delicious October trauma in Nina's body horror plot will be the first bumped off to make room if necessary. (Not players! Just individual characters. And characters can double dip in Bad Times if there's room left without RNG stepping in.)

Sign up by September 27! That's in three days. We're zipping.

Hey it's Jenni again, back with a more flushed-out plot sign-up.

WHAT: Riftwatch agents are being sent to the Tevene-occupied border to meet with a potential defector who's interested in trading intel for safe passage out of Tevinter and a place in Riftwatch. Main goals will be:

1. Find out what intel said defector has to trade
2. Decide how much they trust him (and make a recommendation in their report to that effect, if they like)
3. Convince said defector to trust them
4. Get everyone in and out safely, somehow

HOW: Up to you! What we actually thread out is flexible. I have ideas for SPY INTRIGUE (sneaking into a fancy-ish Venatori party to discreetly meet with and extract Caius?), SPOOKY ACTION (escaping from Tevene guards and/or getting chased through a spooky cave?), and of course a ONE-ON-ONE(ish) thread to talk through recruiting Caius. Lmk what you're feeling on sign-up and I'll get some starters going.

WHO: 2-4 volunteers, though for a one-on-one thread I'd like to have one character take the lead so we can keep the thread moving (though other characters should feel free to chime in). Everything else can be a free-for-all. (And if it ends up just being me and Cami doing a thread that's fine too, I just want anyone else who wants to be involved to have a chance to!) Scouts, forces, and diplomats all have an obvious role here, but the intel Caius has is likely to be technical, so they could use a researcher to verify it if a nerd wants to sign up, etc.

When: Sssssoon?? I'd like to close sign-ups Friday June 7 in hopes of getting started this weekend, just so I can start rping more widely in a timely fashion.

WHAT: While the Orlesian court winters in Halamshiral, a contingent from Riftwatch has been invited to spend a week visiting a potential financial supporter (an old friend of Alexandrie, Byerly, and Bastien) and her collection of academics and artists, where they can engage in whatever combination of philosophical conversation, fancy-dress dancing, hunting for sport, and sneaking around that suits them.

WHO: Anyone. We tried to include reasons for anyone from any division to tag along. The Diplomacy angle is obvious, but for Forces there's the need for protection on the road (and in the Bard- and Chevalier- and now ghost-infested city). For Research, the Baroness is a big supporter of the University who will also have some professors &c. come around as well, so it's a chance to befriend both her and her circle of friends for nerd network reasons. And for Scouting, Halamshiral in the winter is a great place to snoop around and/or steal things.

HOW: You can go here for an open log, no sign-ups required. You can use it as a lowkey hangout log if you want to just write your character getting lost in an ice maze (non-dangerous garden variety), or you can do something more serious with the local politics and Veil situation. That's the main thing.

There are two other things you can do:

1. Reply here to receive a custom scenario for your character to have to deal with. You can incorporate it into your RP to whatever degree you want (play it out, reference it in another thread) or just reply to us OOC to tell us how your character would respond, so we can take it into account when writing the report about how Riftwatch went over with everyone during the visit. (These are closed! But feel free to invent your own scenarios of a similar kind.)

2. If your character has their own thing you want them to get up to in Halamshiral -- like if they have relatives to visit, or if you'd like them to steal an eluvian or otherwise do something of notable consequence -- and you want to use this plot as a backdrop and excuse for them to be in the area, you can! Just submit your own plot or info requests as needed. (Dropping in on a cousin to say hello: no plot request needed. Your character uncovering an enemy conspiracy in Orlais: plot request needed. If you aren't sure if what you want to do needs its own plot request you can ask us in the comments.)

WHEN: Now. No preplanning we die like men.

Hello, all, I am kicking off 2024 by finally running a player plot I've been vaguely mentioning for months.

WHAT (OOC): Essentially a companion quest for Vanya, so best for people who want to deepen (or possibly complicate) CR with him, or a hook for people who might want to get to know him better but find his normal polite demeanor hard to get at under normal circumstances. I'm anticipating more talking than action, though we can work out details depending on who signs up.

WHAT (IC): Vanya has received word from a Nevarran family that is trapped in occupied Hasmal. They're currently hiding with a friendly local contact, but are trying to get to any unoccupied port to bounce to Rivain. He's asked permission to go and retrieve the family, with a bit of backup if any can be spared. If all goes well, this is going to be a covert mission and no one will know they were ever there (except the presumably grateful Nevarrans they're getting out).

WHO: I'm picturing 1-3 in addition to Vanya. Open to anyone. In the unlikely event I have hugely more signups than slots, preference given to Forces or Scouting members.

WHEN: Sign-ups open through Jan. 4 (Thursday), with a log to go up the 6th or 7th. Report tentatively due Feb. 4, with possible minor adjustments depending on when I get the initial log up.

Hello!

As discussed here, a portion of Riftwatch is scheming to display from gratitude for the folks who rewrote time to save various lives. But since that plot already had like seven posts and we're about to go into a mod plot and Satinalia, we're going to skip trying to do an IC party/mingle/etc. and handle this OOC instead.

So in the comments you'll find:

(1) A top-level for the thankers to note what they are giving to/doing for the thankees.

(2) Free for all comments if people want to register anything else of note, like if characters sought out one specific person to thank privately, or someone is mad about being thanked for some reason and stormed away about it.

Reply to whatever you want to discuss whatever you want. And if you find yourself in the position of wanting to thread something for real, go do that.

Hey there! For anyone involved in lyrium experiment hijinks, below is a summary of the general semantic details of the study and what will ultimately be discovered.

WHAT: A study on lyrium and its effects on Rifters and native shard bearers.

HOW: A catch-all mingle log is posted HERE, and covers a somewhat nebulous time across fantasy!October and fantasy!November. I encourage you to house any lyrium study or lyrium study adjacent threads here, that way I don't have to track down a bunch of disparate log and invoice links when I eventually write a report.

This log space doesn't HAVE to be just for the survey activities themselves. If your characters have an argument in the hallway about it, or take this opportunity to secretly touch some raw lyrium off the clock, it can go here as well. The report I eventually write will be strictly about the survey results, most of which is in an ooc form already below.

WHO: Anyone who signed up for the study (or expressed interest at an earlier date) + the nerds running the survey + various subject matter consultants + various medical personnel + honestly if you want to back date your sign up and show up, then go for it.

WHEN: Now, until the end of actual!November. I'll file a report in early December for the sake of having the fantasy paperwork on record for Fade Rift generations to come.

WHAT THEY'LL LEARN: The experiment will be divided into three stages. The study will primarily be overseen by Wysteria and Viktor, although certain Research Division participants (such as Wysteria herself) may play dual roles of both Scientist and Subject. Probably not a conflict of interest at all.

One of Riftwatch's healers (probably Derrica, but if you have someone working in the clinic who wants to say they're on lyrium watchdog duty then feel free to pile in) will be on hand during all stages of the study. The study's base of operations will be the old Felandaris Project office.

That said, this summary covers ONLY the official above the board aspects of the experiment. If your characters choose to go off book and do something naughty with dangerous magical substances, then more power to you. However, if you have questions regarding things that fall outside the boundaries of the below results, I don't have answers - please reach out to the mods with an info request.

( CLICK HERE FOR HOT LYRIUM GOSSIP )

Yaaay we did it. We're done. Thank you all for letting me take over the whole game with this for so long, and apologies to the dead-character-players who were left without much to do for longer than I originally anticipated. A few wrap-up notes:

1. In the "corrected" timeline, there will be no physical evidence of the sad timeline—no scars, no lingering aches, no reports or letters or anything else.

2. I'm leaving it up to players of dead characters to decide whether they want their characters to have had a sense of there being an afterlife or not. If you'd like them to have a sense that their existence continued after life in some way, though, it will be a very vague and formless way, like when you wake up in the middle of a dream and instantly can't remember anything about it. If you'd prefer for them to have a sense of nothing, that is also fine. And either choice might be factually wrong. We just don't know!

3. There's now a wiki page for this event here with a chronological list of links at the end. I'll flesh it out more soon, but everyone else is more than welcome to edit it to add any details and links of their own that they would like to be easy to reference in the future.

4. If you want/need to do some OOC coordination regarding what your character did in the "corrected" timeline, which we are mostly handwaving, you can do that in this post! See the comments.

5. If you have any last questions for me, you can also do that in this post, below.

6. If you would like to volunteer to write a report for any of this (how the time machine was created, what happened at Granitefell for intel purposes, etc.) then you can also do that below. Otherwise I will write one even though it doesn't fully make sense for my character to be the one to do it.