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

[reigniter]

player name(s): Helena
character(s): Ignis Scientia
type of exploration: Minor
area of exploration: Library in the Village
notes: Ignis will drop by to check on the Librarian. He's heard from Noctis that the spirit was in bad shape from the events. He, of course, brought food (some oatmeal cookies) and still has that mask the Librarian gave him at the party, this time around his neck, like a necklace.
His main goal is to do some research, hoping to find some clues, but he is under impression he won't get far without Librarian's help because- he doesn't know where and what to look for.

In the end, even if he doesn't manage to get any research done, he will be satisfied knowing that the Librarian is unharmed.

[inthenightmods]

The Librarian is rattled, but physically (?) unharmed. They adore the cookies, naturally, but even their frantic eating seems to have a slightly glum edge to it. It's been a very long few weeks, Ignis.

That being said: the promise of research seems to cheer them up. They'll lead him around the library and even point out a few interesting biographies, but sadly, there's not much to be found in terms of hard research. Although . . .

There's one tome they try and steer him away from. It's very specific. It's a geography book on North America, and looking's fine, but if he tries to touch it there's a very urgent sort of whine. Not frightened nor angry, but rather . . .

Embarrassed, perhaps?

[reigniter]

Ignis feels like should apologize for what happened and wishes he could help more.

He's glad to see the spirit cheer up when they start researching. It's curious that there are biographies of people here though. Ignis will curiously take a look at those books to see who else was here before maybe?

That being said, the geography book. This is one of those- the more they hide it the more you want to know.

Did they gnaw at it and eat the pages?
"It's okay, I'll just glance through it and leave it, alright?"

He intends to keep the promise.

[inthenightmods]

The biographies are fairly ordinary: interesting, but not particularly notable. Did he ever want to know more about, say, Muhammad Ali or King Charles? But not about anyone here.

That said: the geography book. The Librarian huffs again, then turns, shuffling off to the other side of the shelves. They'll be there when Ignis wants them, but this is too embarrassing to stick around for.

Because once he opens the geography book, he'll find writing. Scrawled notes around the margins, particular on one page of a map. That map shows the continent of North America, but there are sections circled and blocked out, numbered seemingly randomly from one to twelve.

Panem, one of the words reads over the top. Is this Panem before? Or after?

[reigniter]

Not something Ignis recognizes. He'll probably give them a read when he has nothing else to do (bookworm remains a bookworm).

He is, however, intrigued by the geography book. He only wanted to take a look but now he's curious. Why would the Librarian be shy about it? Did they write on the margins of the book?

Ignis brings his lantern closer to take a better look. He's never heard of Panem before, and the continent is unknown to him. But it has to mean something since someone was frantically trying to... solve something? Mapped regions... cut out... this can't be the island they are on right now, right?

He wishes he could ask the Librarian about it, but he doesn't want to upset them further.

Ignis has no clue how old the book is, so he slowly flips the pages (so that they don't fall apart) trying to see if there's anything else that can fill in the blanks.

[inthenightmods]

For the record: the Librarian is embarrassed because they let someone write in one of the books! That's totally embarrassing! Jeez! They're supposed to be the ideal Librarian, and yet they let this travesty happen.

But the pages don't reveal too much more. There's sections that are carefully underlined, but they're mostly plants native to the north-eastern regions: sagittaria, taraxacum . . . edible plants. Animals, too, deer and geese and the like.

[reigniter]

Ignis makes sure to keep his lantern close enough and take the picture of everything marked in the book- the maps, the underlined pages, the crossed and cut out sections. It feels like a puzzle for solving. He will read them carefully and keep an eye out for anything that shows up as he goes through some other books.

Once he's done, he closes the book and puts it back into its place, responsibly, and joins the Librarian. It's not nice to make them wait.

"Thank you. Where off to next?"

Perhaps it will put the Librarian in a better mood.

"You are keeping the Library in such a good state. Thank you." Now that they make sure to bring food over, the books remain whole! It makes everyone happy.

[inthenightmods]

Ah . . . they're pleased by that, as evidenced by two stubby hands lifting up and touching where a face might be. On their cheeks? Their mouth? Whatever, they're just pleased. And they'll lead him over to the Good Shit books, aka, the books that they haven't even considered eating!

Also, they're about whatever. But the point is: once these books were being saved as treats, but now Ignis can eat them if he wants. Or read them. Whatever.