exploration

[inthenightmods]

EXPLORATION

ACTIVE EXPLORATION SLOTS: 0/8

Explorations are currently OPEN. They will close again when we run out of active exploration slots.

Building a structure may be done at any time and does not affect the active exploration slots.

•••
The forest engulfing Beacon is dense and uncharted, but that just means there's never a shortage of cool stuff to discover lurking off the beaten path. There's always new locations, plot clues, or extra resources to be found, so although venturing into the woods is always dangerous, the rewards may just outweigh the risks.

Once you come up with a plan, please fill out and submit the form below. We'll respond in one of two ways, depending on the nature of your exploration:

• In most cases, we'll respond with a single write-up detailing the outcome of your exploration. For example, characters venturing out into a particular part of the woods may discover a new location! In that case, you'll receive a full description of that new location, along with any other details worth noting, such as forest spirit encounters or difficulties along the way. If your group would then like to react to any of this or explore that location after its discovery, you can then respond with your own write-up of everything your group would investigate, and we'll let you know what happens as a result. And that's it! Then the exploration is wrapped, the location becomes available to the game at large, and you're welcome to thread out any details of the exploration if you like.


• In limited cases, an exploration request will open a dialogue between the players and mods to determine the outcome of your exploration. For example, characters attempting to interact with forest spirits may get the chance to play out that encounter, whether it be a pleasant conversation or, uh, the forest spirit trying to kill you, since that happens sometimes. Explorations of this nature will not always result in a response like this, as it'll depend on our availability as mods. If you're interested in doing an exploration like this and don't want to leave it up to chance, PM us! We'll work with you to schedule an encounter.

Regardless of which type of exploration you end up with, what you do during an exploration is entirely up to you, so feel free to get creative! We always try to reward creativity in some way, even if it's not a success in the way that you hoped for.

•••
Before you embark on your quest, here's everything you need to know about explorations:

• Exploring uncharted territory is intended to be dangerous, and there is always a risk of failure, injury, and other setbacks. If you're not on board with these risks, exploration may not be in the cards for you.


• That said, the exploration form includes an opt-in for serious injury and death. If you aren't interested in having your character(s) at risk for that stuff at this time, you can let us know upfront. Please keep in mind that opting out of serious injury/death does not mean you're opting out of the above risks of failure, injury, and other setbacks. Those risks are always in play during explorations. In addition, while opting out of serious risks doesn't mean you'll get a watered down exploration, some discoveries lurking out in the forest are reserved for risk-taking characters. For example, opting out of serious risks eliminates the chance of running into the hostile green-eyed spirits, so characters interested in pursuing green-eyed spirit plot threads will have to put themselves on the line to do so.


• If you choose to opt into the risks of serious injury and death, your character's safety is forfeit and you give the mods the right to maim accordingly (though, of course, we'll check permissions posts in doing so). This does not mean that groups opting into these risks will always be tormented and killed! It's just helpful for us to know your preferences and expectations upfront. Please keep in mind that opting into the risk of serious injury or death applies to the whole group, not just individual characters.


• Explorations into the area of Beacon currently occupied by the Parade will always be extra dangerous. Characters will run the risk of encountering the Parade itself, but besides that, the Parade's presence gets all the forest spirits in the area extra revved up, increasing their hostility. We'll give you the "danger zone warning" at the top of the exploration if you're about to head into Parade-infested territory, as characters may be seriously injured or killed at any point during an exploration within the parade route. You can check the Parade's schedule on the calendar page.


• Chance of success will be left up to a mix of mod discretion and RNG. We'll typically use a RNG to determine what you find, if anything, but we'll also take player/character ingenuity into account. In short: If you have a solid, creative plan, you're more likely to be rewarded for that. Aimlessly wandering won't always get you nothing, but it's less likely to earn you something neat for your trouble. (However, please do be encouraged to follow the dumb idea that's in your character's heart. We will reward for IC idiocy, too.)


• Having torches from the bonfire with you will also increase your chance of success, though be careful: If you lose the torches while exploring, someone will have to recover them or they're lost forever. Additionally, you must request torches through the item request page in order to take them on explorations. Torches not logged through the item requests page are not considered game canon.


• Once you receive a mod response to your exploration, you will have one week to tag us back. If that week timer runs out, we'll consider that exploration closed, and mod responses will stop. You're welcome to handwave your own IC conclusion to the exploration at that point. To be extra clear: the time it takes for us mods to respond to your exploration is not included in that time limit. The timer starts fresh each time we tag you back.


• Explorations over two weeks old will be wrapped in the next mod response. This is to prevent explorations from dragging on for too long, which will slow up our system, but more importantly, it'll make for awkward timing issues in the game! We don't want to leave players waiting on exploration outcomes to be able to engage with the rest of the game.


• Characters may only embark on one exploration at a time, no matter how small. Pretty self explanatory! One at a time, please. If you play more than one character, you may send them on concurrent explorations, but keep in mind that we might deny exploration requests like this to give other players a chance to hop in.


• We will only accept a maximum of 8 active explorations at a time. If those 8 slots fill up, we'll close the queue to new submissions until we're able to wrap some of the active adventures. This number is based on mod availability.


• Explorations will always be closed during events except under rare special circumstances. Similarly, explorations can't be forward- or back-dated to happen during an event. Go do event things instead!


• You can also submit an "exploration" to build a new structure on this page! Just use the appropriate form below.

To EMBARK ON AN EXPLORATION, please fill out the form below:

<b>player name(s):</b> (please list ALL PLAYERS involved with the exploration!) <b>character(s):</b> (please list ALL CHARACTERS involved with the exploration!) <b>area of exploration:</b> (please be as specific as possible! we need to know where your character is/is trying to go.) <b>date(s) of exploration:</b> (you may forward or back date by up to two weeks from the current date.) <b>plan:</b> (what, specifically, are you doing? this is the place to detail the plan in full, so be sure to include all of the relevant details so that we can factor it all into our response. consider questions like: what's the goal? are you bringing supplies or torches? does anyone have experience or training that could assist with your plan? is anyone already injured or impaired? tell us what your plan is! AS A REMINDER, EXPLORATIONS WILL TYPICALLY ONLY RECEIVE ONE RESPONSE TO DETAIL THE RESULT, so it's important to be clear about your intentions and plans!) <b>is your group willing to accept risk of serious injury/death?</b> (a simple yes/no is all we need, and please only give ONE ANSWER for the whole group. a "yes" here doesn't automatically mean you'll all die horribly, and a "no" doesn't mean you won't get anything cool. we'll check permissions posts before injuring/killing characters.)

To BUILD A STRUCTURE or ALTER THE SETTING, please fill out the form below:

<b>player name(s):</b> (please only list the names of the players ORGANIZING construction/alteration.) <b>character(s):</b> (please list ALL CHARACTERS involved with construction/alteration.) <b>location:</b> (please be as specific as possible so that we can add it to the map!) <b>start date:</b> (when does this project BEGIN? based on the details you provide in this submission, we'll let you know how long it will take the characters to complete the project.) <b>plan:</b> (this is the place to tell us how the construction/alteration is going to happen! hit us up with as many details as you have, as we'll be using this plan to determine the length of the project.) <b>description:</b> (what does the finished product look like? this is the description as it will appear VERBATIM on the setting page.)

Please note that with the recent discovery of the medical center, each player may only explore the medical center ONCE for the time being in order to give everyone a chance to get involved. If exploration requests die down and there are still areas to be uncovered, we may lift that rule. We'll make an announcement in the OOC comm should that happen.

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Comments

[evulsed]

player name(s): king
character(s): Vanitas
area of exploration: Vanitas wants to get to the lighthouse! he's going to start following the path north-west out of the town.
winters? no he's convinced he can do it on his own
notes: very minimal supplies, because he isn't used to needing anything like that and keeps forgetting that he needs to eat. he has extensive combat experience though, and will be actively keeping an eye out for these elusive forest spirits people keep talking about.
eta i just noticed some other intrepid adventurers went up this way— and Vanitas is going to jump the barbed wire fence because he has no self preseveration

[inthenightmods]

Vanitas can attempt this! And, yes, he will run into the barbed wire fence along the way, and he can easy hop over it.

But! Before we proceed: Are you super sure about this decision?

😃

[evulsed]

[dualikey]

BYE VANITAS

[inthenightmods]

At first, Vanitas is able to progress past the barbed wire fence with little difficulty. The forest remains silent save for the faint churning of waves beyond the trees.

The creatures are silent, too. While in daylight, Vanitas may have been able to spot the line of forest spirits blocking his way well in advance, given the darkness, it's only as he's almost on top of them that they appear in the light of his lantern. They fidget awkwardly, limbs swaying on uneven joints and masks cocked at bizarre angles, but they do nothing to stop his approach. They just stare.

The line stretches well into the darkness on either direction, and Vanitas might be able to spot some spirits lurking in among the trees beyond the line, as well. Most notably, though, is the tall forest spirit directly in front of Vanitas. All he'll be able to make out are its slender, bony limbs and emaciated torso. It's naked and genderless and breathes in heavy, rasping gasps, just barely audible under the silence. Its shoulders and whatever's above them disappear into the tree branches.

Slowly, it lifts one hand, and points back in the direction Vanitas has come from.

[evulsed]

i am LIVING too bad vanitas won't be for long


Though they'll startle him, just the sight won't be enough to turn him back. He's seen and made his fair share of strange, disturbing creatures— but that doesn't stop the crawl of wrongness from going up his spine. It'll spill out of him in the shape of a handful of Unversed that follow him as he makes his way through the forest. He'll even put his lantern in the masked faces of some of the spirits just to get a better look and see if he can feel if they're made of darkness or light.

The big guy should be enough to stop him, but instead, Vanitas summons his keyblade and says something to the effect of: Move, or I'll make you move.

[equinoctials]

R.I.P.

[evulsed]

also before he potentially gets his face ripped off or whatever— would it be possible for Vanitas to take a picture of the spirits at all as he's walking up this macabre little red carpet?

[inthenightmods]

To reply to your question down below, Vanitas can certainly take pictures of the spirits. They may come out blurry due to the low light conditions, but they should be decent enough.

The spirits don't react much to having the lantern brought up to their faces, just sort of looking and tilting their heads. They don't feel like beings made of either darkness or light, even up close.

When Vanitas summons his blade and challenges the group, the incredibly tall one raises its hand once again— this time pointing at Vanitas himself. It lets out a low, groaning sound, almost too low to hear, but loud enough to vibrate the trees and rumble through Vanitas' chest. The rest of the spirits take up the call, though theirs aren't quite as deep; instead it's more like a series of hoots and the sound a glass bottle makes when you blow into it. This continues for a moment as the spirits suddenly stand stock still.

When they move again, it's swift and sudden. They rush forward in a wave, gangly limbs surprisingly agile for how awkward they look. The ends of their formed line move in to flank their prey, with more spirits spilling from the trees and underbrush. Vanitas and his Unversed are quickly surrounded.

The creatures don't seem to have any weapons, and they don't use any sort of magic. They simply grasp at their victims, snatching any limb they can before violently tearing it from its parent body. Some of them bite, too, their masks splitting to reveal rows of jagged teeth. Their aim doesn't appear to be to eat, just to kill, pulling their prey apart in a wild frenzy. And all the while they continue their ghastly cries. The tall one simply observes.

There are dozens and dozens of spirits, and their sheer numbers make it difficult not to be overwhelmed. The Unversed keep them occupied only a short while before they move on to Vanitas himself. Any of them struck down are simply replaced by another, though it's hard enough to damage them. They just keep coming and coming until they finally accomplish their task.

Vanitas is dead, and his lantern light flickers out.

(As a quick mod note, since this happened a little while ago, Vanitas can be back in time for the Graves event.)

[evulsed]

Gross!! I love it!!

(As a note to anyone that might be following this his death is gonna happen during the Graves event instead of before.)