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

[inthenightmods]

Maybe they don't quite grasp it by the time it leads to something. Or rather, leads them to something.

It might just seem like a product of the Upside Down, but no, in reality this place really does just look like that. In a small clearing, the trio stumbles (quite literally, perhaps) upon the shell of a decrepit old farmhouse. Spooky enough on its own, but... is that light coming from inside? How's that possible?

Maybe they ought to climb in through one of the doorless entrances and find out! It's a safer place than outside, surely.

[savingthrows]

Responding here for the group, all information cleared with all of us of course :)

We're making good life choices, and going in. Clearly the outside is dangerous what with the moving trees and all, and whatever this house is, it's gotta be.... safer. Yes. Totally.

Before entering, Elena reasons with Eleven that she stay behind Elena and Wanda to watch their backs and be their backup. Whatever she and Wanda can't handle will be El's to deal with - or whatever manages to sneak up behind them.

Wanda, in turn, will be emotional over seeing El given the first El's death. She'll offer to hold Eleven's hand. Eleven - misunderstanding - will think Wanda needs the reassurance and hold her hand, and tell her not to worry; Eleven's gonna protect the both of them. Wanda swears "We'll all protect each other." and feelings are *had* overall.

SO, Elena is going in first, with Wanda behind holding Eleven's hand, Elena and Wanda more focused on what's coming from their front. They're shaking the "hearing calls from loved ones" aspect of the hallucinations completely, though some of the Upside Down hallucination is still bleeding fom Eleven to Wanda to Elena for atmospheric funtimes.

They're all on he lookout for danger and not running inside in blind chaos, rather Eleven and Wanda respectively are ready to use their telekinesis to defend anyone in the team, or yank them out of harms way if possible (or try and fail). Wanda's telepathic abilities, however, are still a bit on the fritz. Elena is up front with her supernatural senses primed for whatever may be in the murder house with them, ready to insert herself between danger and either of the women at her back

[inthenightmods]

Though they're on alert, the girls won't be able to sense anything out of the ordinary. No longing cries, no frantic thoughts . . . just utter silence. The house isn't even creaking, and the further they walk, the more they might notice that nothing is making sound: not their footsteps, nor any ambient noise from outside. And if they open their mouth to comment on it--

Well. They can't even hear themselves. It's not that they're not speaking; rather, it's as though they're in space, their sounds emptying into a vacuum. Their footsteps slow, their feet sticking in the suddenly tar-like floorboards, until at last they come to an unwilling halt.

Then they hear something.

It's a scratching noise, like a dog's nails against wood. It comes from the left, behind a closed door; it judders in its frame, the catch rattling. The sound grows more and more violent the longer it goes on; the scratching grows more frantic, louder, grating in their ears; there's faint shadows and movement beneath the crack of the door.

It stops.

The knob turns.

It's hard to see what emerges. It melts into the shadows so seamlessly, there's just hints of movement here and there. But the'yll feel it soon enough, coming up to each of them.

To Eleven, it drags long fingers up the back of her neck, over her ear, the fingers always somehow invisible no matter how she looks. They drag up her face, tracing over the curve of her eye, probing gently there, pushing her eyeball back once or twice. For a moment it seems as through they might plunge right in, plucking it straight out of her skull, but--

No, at the last second they change their mind, dropping down to her neck. Two sharp claws dig in, drawing blood; a second smears it, getting plenty on its fingers, before retreating.

To Wanda: the hands trace over her mouth, nails cutting sharply at her lips, her cheeks, but though they draw blood, it's minimal, and that's clearly not what they're interested in. Instead: they grip her cheeks tightly, pushing until she opens her mouth. Two tendrils slip in, sinking up between her teeth. They wrap around a molar, they pull--

--but ah, in the end, they can't find the strength to yank it out. Instead: they chip off a bit, a small chunk that she might not even notice gone, but which nevertheless will be useful.

And to Elena: the tendrils reach only her hands. They're cool against her palm, dripping like water down her index finger, circling til they sink deep into her nailbed. There's the oddest sensation of coolness beneath the nail, and then oh, it happens all at once, the entire nail ripping off her finger and dropping down to the floor below. Just like with Wanda, though blood drips, it's not that the creature is interested in.

Blood, tooth, nail. A powerful combination, and the thing croaks in something that sounds like laughter. Retreats back into the room, but there's more of a hint of it now: less invisible, with unnaturally long limbs and a faint, pale face visible, slowly retreating. It grins horribly at them, even as the door slams shut.

The front door slams open. The group finds that they can move, speak. But if they venture any farther into the house, they'll find themselves stuck again. There's only one way out, and it's the way they came.

Outside, there are three Christmas ball ornaments waiting on the porch. Next to them: a note.

The Baubledook thanks you for your patronage. Come again!

The way back to town is now a clear, straight line out of the woods.