PLOT ENGAGEMENT (ARCHIVED)

[larkers]

> PLOT ENGAGEMENT (ARCHIVED)

What is Plot Engagement and how does it work within Meadowlark? This is the page where players can come discuss with us how to facilitate plots within the setting. However, there will be occasions where a plot doesn't work within Meadowlark's world, and we'll suggest alternative routes. For small worldbuilding or gameplay details, please direct your question to the FAQ. If you're ever not sure if you're at the right page, don't worry—we'll help you get it sorted out. We know we have a load of info!

WHEN WILL YOU HEAR BACK?

◉ All Plot Engagement answers go out on Sunday, except during events.
◉ The deadline to submit a question and ensure you'll hear back from us on Sunday is 11:59 PM UTC on Saturday.

PLOT ENGAGEMENT INCLUDES

◉ Player plots! If you'd like your character to become a mafia boss, this is your place to start. Typically, this involves anything that could impact the setting or other player characters.
◉ Character career advancement that gives the character additional power or status within the setting.
◉ Metaplot exploration and information! We plan all events to give characters something to explore after the event ends. This is the place to do it!

SUBMISSION TIPS

◉ Specify what your character is looking for when they're investigating. What questions are they asking and what angle are they trying to explore?
◉ If you have a specific goal in mind but don't know how to reach it, please let us know.
◉ If you link a thread to us, please summarize it! That helps us process the plot in question.
◉ Don't worry about not knowing the setting like the back of your hand before you submit the plot—that's up to us! We're here to help you with any adjustments to get you on the right track.

NOTES & THINGS THAT YOU CAN HANDWAVE

◉ Characters always start out in entry level positions. Characters can update their skill sets to the 2512 standard through paid apprenticeships or internships.

◈ If a character is advancing within a major corporation (as noted on the Setting or Locations page) or one of its subsidiaries, we will need to approve this advancement.
◈ If a character becomes a supervisor at a local bar or other small business, we do not need to approve this advancement.

◉ Joining the police force within a city requires three months of IC training (six months OOC).
◉ We'll approve whether someone has social media fame, but we will not be providing social media follower counts. Once you have a plot for how to use those followers, that's where we step in!
◉ All Morningstar business goes on our Morningstar page. Please feel free to discuss specific plots here (including joining), and go there for signups and anything else.
◉ Characters getting jobs, finding apartments, participating in the fighting rings, getting married, making workplace friends, the creation of minor NPCs, etc. do not need to be run by us. Please let us know if these expand into player plots or other plot bits!

QUICK LINKS

◉ FAQ: For small worldbuilding or gameplay details.
◉ Setting: Our setting page! We'll update as needed.
◉ Jobs: A reference for who's working where!
◉ Locations: Both major and minor locations within New Amsterdam, as well as outlines for other megacities.
◉ Mod Contact: For wider game concerns.
◉ The Story So Far: Gamewide plot events up to current (your CTRL+F best friend!).
◉ NPC page: Includes NPC blurbs and inboxes.
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> NAVIGATION

Comments

[larkers]

Hey Tifa!

Usually, the legal process is straightforward, but she'd be flagged in the process and could be at risk of arrest. So, there are two options available to you, and it depends on which you'd like to take yourself:

1. El can intervene after she's flagged, but would have to change her identity again. This would result in her losing her job at Riverstone, and a good deal of stability.

2. On the other hand, a certain someone (or something?) known for rescuing people from arrests could intervene (the one who got these guys out, for reference), but it could draw unwanted attention.

Let us know which sounds more appealing to you!

[larkers]

Hey Roni!

Loki can absolutely make this catch on (even if "fetch" never actually happened, come on). We'll mention it on the next calendar!

[forcevisions]

Would option 2 allow for Rey to keep her job? I'm interested in maintaining that stability for her at this juncture. But I'm also interested in 2 bc afaik that was a thread we lost via drops so it'd be nice to bring that back up again.

[selfimage]

yes

[larkers]

Yep, it would help her maintain stability with her workplace, but would allow us to open a can of worms that's been waiting for the entire playerbase!

[forcevisions]

Perfect! You know I love worms; let's do it.

[larkers]

Awesome! To pace ourselves, we'll give you an outline of how things go down next Sunday.

[ofmyth]

HELLO!!

Being back in game I'm keen to have Thor get back into the fighting rings, especially with an eye to Make Money (because some brother of his spent all the money he'd saved up last time).

So I'm curious about how 1: Thor will be received coming back into the rings after winning the championship months ago, especially missing both an arm and an eye. He's not especially keen to explain where he's been, but he can probably come up with some excuse if pressed.

I'm also interested in 2: what opportunities could come up in that setting for making money. He's less willing to work his way into saving money again like he has before (being impatient), so Thor is open to people approaching him for one-off chances to be hired for things in exchange for $$$$, though he's unlikely to take the job if he judges it to be against his values.

[lifetothefullest]

HEYA I return with more stuff. As mentioned in the event idea post, I had a few things I wanted to look into that were more narrow in focus, and so seemed better here.

1. Lance and Nate are planning to go hit up some of the ruins! This is both because Lance wants to see them and because they plan to look for any other bird motifs that may have been missed while people were focused on more important stuff (like solving puzzles.) From what I saw it looked like there were bird god themes at both Everest and Cairo, so Lance and Nate are planning to check out Oslo and Rio to see if they also fit the pattern. Lance is also pretty fascinated by the color-coding sort of thing, so he'll be looking for anything else related to that too.

2. Lance is also particularly interested in the James Henries mystery. As far as he (and I) understand, it seems like James Henries exists/existed in ML-world (not just Zerzura) and was the CEO of Giles-Bell, but that it was too long ago for him to still be alive if he had a normal lifespan. However, there's also the stuff about the mystery guy who shows up over the span of a hundred years without aging.

So I'm thinking the first place to start is looking into what history does exist for James Henries as CEO of Giles-Bell, and try to just get a general idea of the basics about him. This includes trying to find any pictures of him; if he was CEO of such a big company, hopefully there might be pictures (and if there aren't, that's interesting to know too!) If there are pictures, he'll then want to try to compare them to the pictures of the unaging guy, just in case there's a reasonable resemblance there that indicates a lead worth pursuing. If not, he's interested in the idea of facial recognition for the mystery guy if that's a possible thing.

So yeah! I have some other ideas of stuff to look at, but these seem like the easiest to get going on right away. c:

[larkers]

Hi Tifa!

First off, we want to note that this is going to be a part of a mini-event that we'll be running in October while we prep for a year-ending AU event. Good job on those worms, Rey!

Secondly: go ahead and head over to our taken list to have Rey's name updated again. Will she still be Rey Nolo? We're in suspense!

For the first leg of this plot, Rey will be called into a meeting with Meredith Ling and Montague Finnley, Riverstone's Head of Security. Ling is a cold woman in private, with sharp, decisive eyes and a twist of her lips. She's all business, though she does smile, briefly, when she sees Rey face to face. In contrast, Finnley is a charismatic Black man who seems like he enjoys the sound of his voice. But he's nice and he welcomes Rey into the office, calling her "Rey." It's Finnley who leads the discussion here, stating that they got word from the UN that she decided to change her name back to someone that the UN most wanted, but interference from an unknown source prevented any punitive or diplomatic action. Since she's an employee of Riverstone, Ling and Finnley were informed of this.

Now, Finnley insists that they're not mad at Rey in the least: they understand that the UN had made some of her friends look rather bad following the EMP in New Amsterdam, blaming them for everything but the EMP itself. Her moral character there is to be commended. It's just that her friends—meaning "the Displaced"—are of interest to Riverstone.

Starting with Rey, they'll ask her:

• How she came to be what she is now?
• Do the Displaced have a tie to the person who's intervened? Important note: they seemed to be asking about a singular person.
• Do they know where that person is at this time?
• Where does she think she gets her abilities from?

And then they'll offer to do tests, both for Rey and her friends, to help get some clear diagnostics of what they can do. They know the UNA put Rey through some intense circumstances, so they would be happy to provide any and all information on the testing they'd like to do. Everything will involve informed consent, especially since Riverstone could easily take the heat if anything were to happen.

The offer itself comes with a week-long all-expenses-paid vacation to New Beijing. It helps, of course, that Riverstone basically owns the city, but anyone accompanying Rey wouldn't need to concern themselves with reservations and hotel rooms, wouldn't need to eat bad street food, or anything like that.

The offer in return? Answers. They have "suspicions" about who releases them out into the world and are hoping that they can gather information from the Displaced that will help them find who's doing this.

They'll give Rey time to respond, as well as bring her offer to the others. And they encourage her to do just that: to let the others decide if they want to take Riverstone up on their offer, to learn more about themselves and their abilities, at least from a scientific perspective. And in turn, they'll get answers.

[larkers]

Hi Anne!

Before any money-making gets started, Thor will probably want to pick up a prosthetic arm and eye. He can get one that's completely above board and professionally sanctioned through the world's health care system for free. No one will ask too many questions because of the monsters that just attacked, assuming that he went off to fight against them at some point, coming out of retirement from the rings to do so.

Since he has some fans in the rings from before, some of them will give him connections to various prosthetic modification dealers who can help equip him with a strong, fighting arm, as well as any changes and additions he might want. All these people would ask in return is that Thor puts in a good word—and also helps them move some of their goods for the Black Market. He might not be up to fighting condition, but he should be able to help with a job like this. It basically involves moving illegal goods, but no one appears to be hurt by it.

The reason why we'd advise him go get his arm and eye setup again is because many of the fighters in the rings have always had cybernetic prosthetics to make them more formidable in the ring. While we know Thor is a badass, we figure he'd end up struggling a bit given the circumstances. You can also feel free to have Thor go through other PC-related avenues to get this set up, but we figure it might be easiest for him to start through legal means and then beef up later!

Let us know if you have any questions!

[larkers]

Hi Ami!

1. For this first point, we'll say that there aren't any additional birds to be found in either New Oslo or New Rio. You can feel free to have Nate and Lance go and explore, take part in any trials, and so on, but they're unlikely to cover any new information! The log containing a lot of the information about what they would find is here. Anyone else who might want to tag along can for this little adventure!

We want to add that this doesn't mean you should stop looking for birds! Aside from the name of the game, "birds" are obviously a motif.

2. This is a two part question, so we'll handle it for each!

re: James Henries: We actually have an obituary of James here on our Zerzura aftermath, so Lance could easily dig that up! Quiet and introverted, he never married after he stepped down as the CEO of Giles Bell, and there are few records that remain of him. Odd, considering that like many of the leaders of corporations in 2512, he was following in the footsteps of his family. He got the position because of his blood and name more than his talent. He was terrible at it, so his presence in Giles Bell history isn't remembered. As in, they tend to pretend it doesn't exist. What Marta got as a piece of information is carefully concealed and difficult to find. Giles Bell would rather pretend that James Henries was never in charge.

We'll add that there are still a few more pieces of JH/James Henries information out there to find that we believe haven't been reported. One piece went out to Drake Holloway, who's still in game if you'd like to hit up Ana!

Now, as for what James Henries looks like: he'll look a lot like a 68-year-old version of this guy. Note the ears! The picture will be without glasses. This guy will look a lot like what Johann Grey looks like now (btryl), though Johann is considerably younger. Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes will recognize his face, as they've both met Johann in person! Make sure to hit them up for the confirmation.

We'd like to finish out with a note: it's definitely meant to be strange that there's a lack of information about James Henries available. He was a legacy, after all, and he was already living in the heavy surveillance and digital era. So, how is there so little? He may have been a piss poor CEO, but he was still a CEO.

re: the guy throughout the ages: that is not James Henries, from the looks of it. Interestingly enough, trying to do facial recognition or even search back through archives will come up with a whole lotta nothing. It's like this guy doesn't exist. The only search that will come up will be the forum post. It's almost like these images were put together to mess with someone, but it's odd that they can't find a source on the images beyond the forum itself. They had to come from somewhere, right?

Feel free to follow up with any questions or leads! We want to add that both of these have a number of places to go, as well as potential to run into other players' ongoing plots.

[forcevisions]

Quick confirmation before digging into the rest — the Riverstone encounter happens after """someone""" gets her released from jail?

[larkers]

Sorry for the confusion there! Basically, ""someone"" will be intervening the moment she files for a name change, preventing her from getting arrested (since she'd be going to Space Jail this time). Riverstone will be alerted, thus leading to this conversation!

[forcevisions]

Oh ok that makes sense!! ty. two more logistics questions:

Will this be happening in early OOC Oct (i.e., should I time my network post about this then) to segue into your mini-event?

Should I gather info from network post and come back here with what people are planning to do before the event, so y'all have more info for that, or is just throwing up the network post sufficient lead-in?

[larkers]

Hi again!

Yep, early October! We'll be announcing it on the calendar, so you can put up the post anytime after that. The mini-event will largely be what the characters do when/if they go to Riverstone, and will play out accordingly to their reactions.

As for a post, we'll stick a mini-event post up of our own, though it'll largely be detailing what's here. We're going to encourage players to go wild with it, and any new characters can feel free to tag along once they ship out.

So, the event will basically be "these characters go to Riverstone for tests and answers. What next?"

[rehandle]

Clarke and Stephen intend to go public about being Displaced. They’ll do this with a video message posted to both of their personal cooltalks and the Red Wings cooltalk. The video will include:

- Introduction, w/ names and as the owners of Red Wings.

- Clarkeian post-disaster pep talk for the people. Saying they got through this one, and they came out stronger for it. There will be more struggles in the future. Being afraid of them isn't the way to go.

- A little about what they and Red Wings were doing during/have been doing following the recent crisis and that going forward they intend to build on that work to provide a community base and point of contact for introducing individuals to community initiatives, as well as providing food and shelter for those struggling.

- Confirmation that they will be providing organised shelter and medical aid in the event of any future crisis in partnership with PRESERVE.

- Announcement about the fact that they want to help the people of New Amsterdam to protect themselves. They're working on helping get a project off the ground to get people trained and ready, and that there will be announcements in the future about it.

- Coming forward as members of the group with the glow, and they found one another through the glow because they realized that when they touch (showing an example) they react to one another.

- No proven knowledge of where the glow comes from, but the only explanation that they've heard is that the powers are a gift from a god. It's not something they know if they want to buy into, but it's literally the only explanation they've received.

Before this announcement, Clarke will reach out to PRESERVE and:

- Offer a donation to set up a PRESERVE outpost at a location close by to Red Wings.

- Say that there are numerous people from their group hoping to help out with training and giving first aid during crises.

- Be ready to have that outpost and Red Wings work in tandem during crises.

- Create a working partnership with PRESERVE that doesn't force PRESERVE outside of its comfort zone.

Finally, the self-defense project:

- Stephen acquired a warehouse from Jason Todd during the previous monster event, which was quickly converted into a safehouse for PRESERVE.

- Moving forward, Stephen and Clarke will be reaching out to contact New Amsterdam businesses to see if they will be interested in sponsoring a self-defense center, a place where people can learn to protect themselves in a fight, as well as draw up evacuation plans. Is this something that will work out? Will anyone be interested in sponsoring this effort? Let us know if this is an unreasonable plan, and we'll have our characters go back to the drawing board.

- The center will need a gym, mats for training purposes, a place for people to shower, etc.

- They specifically won't be training people in weapons. This may change in the future!

- We believe that Lexa, Castiel, and Glimmer will be spearheading this project. Stephen and Clarke will be training Glimmer in the business aspects, but Clarke and Stephen will be working on getting sponsorship and money going.

When this goes live:

- We'd like for this to go live on October 5, 2020 (OOC), but we understand if this needs to be factored into the monthly calendar since it's a big deal.

- We're happy to have this big post part pushed back while they work on the business and negotiations behind the scenes, so let us know if that works better for you/the game.

Thanks!!

[larkers]

Hi Gee!

We'll get back to you about the stuff in progress, but the Cooltalk post about coming out will need to be postponed until November OOC. We hope this doesn't cause any problems, but we hope the Displaced going off for their field trip to New Beijing (in the month's mini-event) will do the trick of delaying!

[larkers]

Hi Tifa! We're looking at October 14th for our planning post, and October 17th for when the log goes up (with some OOC handwaving over whether or not character IDs will be ready from the new batch). Riverstone will be providing Rey with a link for sign up credentials so that they can be given their hotel information, as well as any additional information. This will also give characters some freedom to sign up without talking to Rey if they so choose (making it so that none of their CR knows they've signed up, for instance).

Thanks for unlocking these worms!

[rehandle]

No problem at all, thanks for letting us know so quickly mod pals!

[unwings]

Hello hello!!

Castiel, Lexa and Dean are taking a field trip into the tunnels beneath New Amsterdam to explore, with a few goals in mind to assist with some of the projects Clarke and Stephen put forward. These are the main focuses they have:

1. Explore viable evacuation routes that they can use to lead civilians out of the city and towards safety. Are the tunnels in a safe condition to take large groups of people through? Are there any places within the tunnels that are particularly safe and secure? Do the tunnels lead somewhere that could be made safe and secure and away from the city streets?

2. Morningstar use. Are the tunnels monitored by anyone else? Are there any kind of animals or monsters down there that need clearing out? Could lights be installed for easier travel? Is there any evidence of other recent traffic through the tunnels?

3. Monster transport. Do the tunnels pass the city walls, allowing them to travel to the areas outside the atmospheric grid? Could they feasibly drag a monster back through if they're able to incapacitate it first?

4. Blueprints/check points. Team Dextiela The Explorer(s) will be taking a patrol around the outer edges of the city to look for places they could indicate as checkpoints/safe places for civilians to gather before evacuating in groups (safety in numbers!!). Ideally, they'd like to get blueprints for both the city and the tunnel system, so they can create maps for civilians to follow during emergencies. Is there anything like that they could procure from El, Cassius, Gaby, or any publically available city archives? It would also be cool to try to build some entrances into the tunnels from those checkpoints, but that would be a new project entirely.

And one last question that's just for Castiel's own shit - do Spinetails (the birds) still exist in this universe, and if so, are they common/endangered, and what regions of the world can they be found in? Same re: Meadowlarks. If Cas were to go digging up random bird trivia focused on these two types, would there be anything interesting readily available through the Implant or other local New Amsterdam sources? He would be willing to visit a bird watchers club (do THOSE still exist??).

[stagethreeclinger]

hello i have more questions

1. Foam - is it easy to get/create if you know the chemistry behind it? Roy volunteered to try making foam practice swords/knives for the civilian training project and I want to make sure that's a feasible thing first.

2. Cyber Security/Surveillance - This was something under in Roy's skillset back home and I'd like to have him try to get at least a little more up to speed with it in here, though I know this one's going to be difficult with how intense cyber security is. Is there a company Roy could intern with for this field (in addition to the Tactus internship)?

I thiiiink that's it for now. thanks for all your hard work, guys!!

[forcevisions]

I realized I kind of took for granted that this would be sort of set in stone with the scenario you described above and didn't factor in the possibility for further engagement with it between now and the mini-event.

If Rey would like to reach back out to the security team at Riverstone, would she be able to get clarification/follow-up information and negotiate the deal further?

[larkers]

Hi Tifa! Gonna do a quick reply to expedite this before Sunday to say: yes, she sure can! Let us know what negotiations or changes she would like to make.

[forcevisions]

Ok if possible she'd like to set up a time to meet with them at Riverstone again and bring Tony Stark (616).

Some things I know already they'd be asking about:

- What is Riverstone's interest in the Displaced?
- What will this data be used for? Who will have access to it? Can the Displaced negotiate an NDA of some kind?
- How can the Displaced be assured that they will be allowed to leave the Riverstone labs once entering, either once testing is done or because they saw the test descriptions on the consent forms and changed their minds?
- How can they be assured that Riverstone will not introduce more tests that were not agreed to once the Displaced are vulnerable and in custody?
- How do the Displaced know Riverstone has any information about the people who dropped them off? They will want evidence before signing up for anything.
- Does Riverstone know who kept Rey out of jail, and will they share that information?