A winterland plotting interest gather/discussion post!!1

[devotedtothecore]

HELLO FRIENDS hope you had a merry winter holidays! A new year is coming, and with it, a new year to plot. Now that the Exsilium story has hit a chapter in which Transports are pretty much running the show for the time being, but it's been a pretty busy time of year for many, it seems like it might be handy to have an OOC get-together to throw around some ideas on Big Stuff For Characters To Do Together, to catch up on plot-and-subplot details (of which I'm not clear on the entirety of myself), for announcements/interestgathers for subplot ideas, and for general asking of questions that other people besides our mods might be able to help answer.

So without further ado:



WINTERLAND SHENANIGANS NEW YEAR'S EVE (AND AFTER) PLOTTING PARTY

Check out the toplevel categories of stuff in the comments, or start your own if I missed any!

Comments

BIG PLOTTING/SHENANIGAN IDEAS AND DISCUSSION

[devotedtothecore]

For large-scale shenanigan ideas that would ideally involve a large number of characters/teamwork/involvement!

Re: BIG PLOTTING/SHENANIGAN IDEAS AND DISCUSSION

[devotedtothecore]

Things off the top of my head:

- State of the UE: As brought up recently on the network, the Transports currently have little info on the state and strength of the UE in terms of their capacity to make multiversal war/raids happen; as far as they know, it's possible that the UE may be crippled from doing so in this altered timeline, in which case, the Transports might perhaps technically have achieved the goal of "saving their own worlds from the threat". To solve this uncertainty, it's possible a scouting mission or several might be necessary; what do you guys think? What would your characters think/how might this impact them? (There's also the question of finding out whether the cloned supersoldiers from the previous timeline even exist in this one, and what that would mean for the necessity of the genetics missions...)

- Base Building: I've seen ideas for some kind of main emergency shelter for Transports tossed around, so expanding on that, are there any characters who would be in for setting up a new base/"Hold" facility on the ground? Maybe in a warehouse or two (possibly underground) commandeered from the locals, or possibly upgrading/expanding the space around the current facility housing the Transporter Pad. They could work to set it up with major spaces to get proper missionlike business moving: labs, garages, stockpiles, the kind of stuff that the Hold used to be a place for providing but now has to be re-established from scratch.

Re: BIG PLOTTING/SHENANIGAN IDEAS AND DISCUSSION

[maddeninghatter]

STATE OF THE UE - intelligence gathering:

Options include:
1. Ask the AI to compile satellite data about the surface, and seek out heat signatures and other information about installations there, military or otherwise. Probably this information is encrypted, so perhaps computer hacker type characters would be useful for this. Other characters with military strategy experience could perhaps interpret the data.
2. Get in the spaceship and fly by areas of interest as determined by #1 above. Pilot characters would be especially well-suited for this.
3. Use the transporter pad and hologram technology to slip into areas of interest as narrowed down by #2. Ninja-type characters, assassins, spies, and telepaths would be very useful here.

Base Building:
The Creepy Castle could serve as this temporarily. The entire Museum section is underground, no windows, so it could serve fairly well as a bomb shelter (beware of falling art, however). It also was a large hotel, so if characters are interested in renovating a room, they could stay there as long as they like.

[ETA]

And how about a mission to ELMER'S WORLD to see if it's still a wasteland? This could be a preamble to trying to go home for good.

[resolve]

Mostly I just want to unhelpfully +1 this comment, because this all reads really nicely to me.

I think it's a good plan for gathering intelligence on the current state of the UE, and allows opportunities for a lot of characters with various skill sets to get involved! And I like the idea of doing it in three phases like that. I'm down with the idea of a mission to Elmer's world, too, if that's a thing that can be done, since there are probably a fair number of characters (Katniss here included) that would actively work toward the goal of going home for good if the UE isn't a threat to their own worlds anymore.

[maddeninghatter]

How much does Katniss know of technology? Break would be hard-pressed to propose option #1 because haha pseudo-Victorian.

It has occurred to him to use the spaceship or the transporter pad for intelligence-gathering purposes, but how to narrow down where to start looking is the major sticking point.

If you're interested, Break and Katniss should talk!

[commentboxtroll]

re: Elmer's world!

Caesar was just talking about this with Elmer, too, haha. I think we might want to wait for a better idea of what the UE's status currently is before trying that, because with how the events that led to the destruction now never happened, there's a high chance they'd just be leading the UE back for round #2.

Although that's something Caesar would just argue over IC, should it come up. Not saying it can't be discussed or anything.

I don't think this is going to be anything big, but!

[senseandcecilbility]

As a side note, Kevin has been involved (or is probably going to be involved) in both State of the UE and Base Building.

State of the UE: He will be spying on Exsiles and their more influential people for Barma in other to gather intelligence. Most likely, he will infiltrate into their houses as a servant. I think he would do well in #3 too!

Base Building: Cleaning all the things and cooking for all?

[highfrequency]

NINJAS YOU SAY?

Raiden could get in on option 3, since he is a ninja from a self-described "Tactical espionage action" series. He happens to be a cyborg one with super strength and a secret, flamboyant psychosis but he's still a ninja.

He's been part of a few intelligence plots so far so he knows his stuff in-setting.

Re: BIG PLOTTING/SHENANIGAN IDEAS AND DISCUSSION

[khajidont]

Count this as another +1! Jaime would be the worst spy ever and would be caught in like five minutes BUT! He and the advanced sentient AI in his spine would be more than happy to work on number one - it's something he's been considering independently, so getting some plotting in on this would be awesome.

[notpeterparker]

SUPER BIASED but I'd love a future mission to the Baccano world again, after gathering more info on the UE. Intelligence gathering sounds like a fantastic idea, with a lot of opportunities for characters with various skills to get involved in.

[governorkang]

Kang and Kate are currently discussing a backup location in the mountains up north, away from the natives, and are probably going to have a couple of the other players check out if there's a spot that's A) defensible and B) near resources.

[highfrequency]

Jumping in here to say that Loki's castle is probably still there! It wasn't his to begin with, he just hijacked it in the past and made it his back when I played him.

It was up in the mountains to the far north in what used to be the borderlands. I am totally okay with it being brought back in the game since I already set it up as a physical place and there's no reason it'd be gone given the timeline it was built in was a while before the changes happened. It'd just be a bit different.

[gevurah]

I just got home but a quick note that Kate's been able to find underground shelter (since the mountains may be too far in case of emergency). Jude knows of their existence and she was ICly away until the past weekend to examine them thoroughly, but she'll be on that as soon as I can settle back online between holiday stuff.

If anyone wants to work with something there let me know, too!

[unholy_rebirth]

HI I am interested in these ideas and would like to sign up for your newsletters. Thereth is probably more useful with building than scouting, since she can't blend in with the locals, but she'd be game for things like that too!

Also I wanted to add a thing about the moon base. About....how....I'm not sure, but Thereth feels that it should be maintained? Are there people still living up there? People who frequent it? Do we have any ideas for expanding it or anything?

[devotedtothecore]

OKAY HOLIDAY RUSH IS OVER (I think), sorry to wait on this!! It'd be awesome to have Thereth in on this, do you want Chrysos to ICly contact her? Or she could contact him (he made a network post calling for building/engineering/science types some time back).

As for the moon base, as far as I know there's still a few Transports living up there? There was talk from Pascal about expanding it with tunnels, I think. As for Chrys's personal thoughts, he feels that it's not bad to keep it running, but they do need an equivalent base on the ground as well, since they're limited in terms of shuttle capacity to and from the moon.

WTF Happened?

[maddeninghatter]

The announcement that radiation levels had dropped came suddenly, out of the blue, on the tail end of the mutiny. Most of December was devoted to finding shelter and food, as well as exploring the landscape. But there are some essential questions that need answering, in addition to the state of the UE:

1. The past was clearly changed, by some time traveling mission. Was it an accident or on purpose? Paranoid characters might see the mutiny as being cover for this stealth mission. It's worth asking questions about who went on missions in November, and what their purpose was, and if anything untoward happened.

If changing the past is determined to have been accidental, this suggests that time travel missions ought to be put on hold until characters can figure out what happened, so as not to accidentally change the future again. Break, in particular, is concerned about time travel missions inadvertently making things worse — for example, bringing back Nuked!Exsilium or even more horrible scenarios.

Corollary questions are: why wasn't there a nuclear war? what happened to trigger the Ice Age? was it just an environmental catastrophe, or did some government (or other) entity create it?

2. Why mammoths? Why yetis? Why killer penguins? Given the old UE's penchant for genetic engineering, might this be a clue to something similar going on now? Could this be why the natives are so hostile to non-humans?

3. Why are the New Initiative so underground? Why are they paranoid about Transports - and afraid of their own people? Are the New Initiative the good guys or the bad guys?

[overclocking]

re: #2! I'm just gonna drop what we were talking about on plurk in here really fast.

Chrono has done a month of EXTREME SPORT hunting now and has been exposed enough to the local wildlife for there to be concern/suspicion, particularly given that Project Chimera is an ongoing priority. Chrono (and I imagine probably also some of the other Transports who were kidnapped a few months ago??) would really like to know what's going on with that in this timeline, which sort of meshes into investigating current timeline!UE.

Personally I'd be 100% down for some plotting to investigate the genetics shenanigans in particular.

[ringthenoise]

Do you have any mod-endorsed info on the local fauna? Dante here has also been hunting but I've just been so scatter brained this month I haven't been able to look into that much. (woe)

If there IS some concrete info, Dante and Chrono should compare notes sometime. Especially since Dante was not around before the Initiative moved people to the moon so he has no point of comparison here. He just knows what he sees.

[maddeninghatter]

Excellent, so sounds like Chrono could spearhead some of the genetics questions. I believe there was a mission to pet Yetis or something like that, so perhaps connecting/trading information with those folks?

[khajidont]

re: genetics shenanigans, I think that investigating what the hell happened on Earth would be a good start as to how far the UE has gotten in with cloning shenanigans in this timeline. One thing that Adam Warlock mentioned on Beetle's last post (and something he'd also like to look into) is the idea of whether or not going back in time to a point at which the Transports were already there is plausible, and using that to see what happened in the immediate past! One idea could plausibly be to go back to the day of the kidnapping or the day of the rescue mission?

SPIES AND MOLES and also faustian bargains r us

[undealt]

I'm not really sure where this goes, because it has the potential to be HUGE and also tiny. Gold's main objective is making this go away in relatively short order, but he's pretty prickly about the idea of changing the past. He has a... "if you're stuck in the past, you'll never find your future" mentality.

His main concern is that Transports who prefer to not actively contribute and are sitting around waiting are hindering the mission, so SCHEME A involves the encouraging of cooperation through manipulation and deals. WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU is if you have a character who isn't willing to participate in missions/general shenanigans and you want them to stop being a freeloader, then Gold could probably help make that happen. Making a deal with him doesn't have to be anything major, but if a character has a want or desire that might require powerful magic or something like it, they can always make a deal with him and Gold can call in a favor where it suits him/the objective.

Of course, if you have a character who DOES participate, they can still make deals with him. You never know when a guy might need a personal favor. Yaaay.

SCHEME B is simply this: Gold and Big Peter are discussing spies and moles in the UE and Gold has this nifty ability to steal hearts and control the person the heart belongs to. I'll need some mod feedback on that, because HAHAHA WEIRD GODMODE POWERS ARE WEIRD and I'm not sure how we'd even go about making that happen. I don't think there's any ~magical~ way to detect someone who has had their heart stolen and they can function as normal, but they have to act on Gold's orders and Gold can see everything they see. This is pretty blindly unethical, but even if he doesn't get the greenlight to do it from anyone he views as someone with any kind of authority around here, he might do it anyway. Because don't tell him what he can't do. Assuming I have permission to do that. IDK. It is a thing.

I babbled a lot. I am sorry.

Re: SPIES AND MOLES and also faustian bargains r us

[devotedtothecore]

HI sorry I'm late to this!!! I don't have much to contribute beyond supporting this as a possible plot, and also it looks like it might be possible for you to get together with Angel's player (the comment below) and entwine plots on this front, since she's got an outline of a UE spying mission going, too.

data mining

[phaseshifted]

About a week back, Angel began making inquiries to the Initiative as to how one could obtain access to the United Earth network. This has naturally been met with suspicion and threats, and so she's been working on a plan to propose to other Transports that they should form a team and venture into UE territory to obtain such a connection, where she can use her powers to take them by surprise and pull what she can out while they're off guard.

The rewards: a much greater volume of information from the United Earth's open media, on the past through UE eyes, current events both useless and significant, and possibly future plans.
The risks: Possible death, being tracked back to Exsilium and action being taken against them if the Transport Pad is found out.
The cost: Slightly over a month of time with good luck, longer if things go wrong.

This is not going to happen in the near future-if anything, it will be in several months once the UE AI's path has been altered and the Alternative Energy Arc has been completed in order to provide an IC safety net and OOC time to plot out a course of action for something of this size. ICly, the reason for this delay is Angel having one of her passing visions and getting enough from it that going out right now is a Bad Idea, especially without possible happenings accounted for.

This is the mod response and explanation of the threats facing whatever team chooses to go out, as well as some of the aftermath.

I know I've hardly covered all the information needed to make decisions on this, but with what I have so far, anyone interested?

Re: data mining

[devotedtothecore]

LATE TO THIS but I just wanted to say that I totally second movements in this direction as well, though ICly Chrys is not a computing person so he might not be able to contribute as much.

[phaseshifted]

Any amount of contribution is fine at all! The computing won't be the tricky part-it's actually getting out and surviving all the obstacles that'll be the biggest concern.