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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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1. Looking into Ball's death will bring up an obituary with some information about his family. He's the son of Fadi and Basira Kattan, and he died at the age of 33. He was born on December 5, 2479. However, there aren't a lot of social media records for Matek, which may be in line with the fact that he is the head of a group that's not very fond of technology as a whole. Despite his jovial personality, he was reclusive.
As it is, his father is one of the board members for Pulsar, which is why Matek got a job at Tempo (a subsidiary of Pulsar) despite having a limited job history. It'll be difficult to trace many of Ball's friends because of his limited social media presence.
However, they can find some leads if they look into Basira and Fadi's social media history. The two of them have Cooltalks dating back to before Ball's birth, though they're rather perfunctory in nature, acting as a timeline for their lives. Both of them will have a post on December 6, 2479 notating the birth of their daughter, along with a name that can be presumed to be Matek's deadname. There will be a lot of gatherings with another family, the Mattos, as well as postings of their children spending a lot of time together. It's around when Ball is six years old that his parents begin referring to him as their son, as well as the name Matek. At this point, he appears to be best friends with the daughter of that other family, Julianna Mattos. Despite Ball's reclusiveness and reluctance to be on social media, his parents do have a record of him throughout the years. Julianna is often there alongside him sporting a stern expression to Ball's jovial smiles.
However, further research into the woman who appeared to be Ball's best friend will turn up little. Like Ball, she has little to no social media presence.
2. Keep in mind that, again, Rey and Quentin will not be able to join this group because of what they represent to them! That said, they're very private about their worship because it's a very, very counter-culture idea. They object to technology as a whole in a highly technical world, and seem to believe that humanity would be better off without it. This leads to their sparse online presence. They seek out evidence of god in the world through nature and community, while trying to push ways for humanity to detach itself from a reliance upon technology. Thus, they do things like pickling, fermentation, composting, and they're probably running a greenhouse and providing surplus produce and foodstuffs for poor people in the area.
If your thoughts upon reading that is, "That's not very organized." Well, that's true. Keep reading, please!
3. There's no name for the religion! This is in part because there will be a sense that any (minimal) organization has happened during Ball's lifetime. Knowledge of this culture and its gods was largely lost in this world, so there's no history for them to draw from. The people believing it are a minority group.
4. There is barely any structure. While Ball was undoubtedly the "head" and the "funder" of the wider encompassment of activities, he didn't impose a structure upon them. Now that he's gone, there will be a new NPC head, but we would prefer for the PCs to discover that organically through play!
5. Ball was the "leader" in the loosest sense of the term. He wasn't a religious figure by any means, but did help spread the word of the seven gods and the spiritual connotations connected to it. A lot of their activities became more prominent after the appearance of the Displaced. Prior to that, he largely ran the Insomniac Ball and served as a way for people of their belief system to gather and worship.
6. Their goals are, as of now, faith and worship, but they will definitely use the simulation as motivation for humanity discarding technology so that they can once more be in touch with the gods. They'll be using the glitches as proof, as the Displaced were the ones causing that with their glowing powers. Ball was not a very goal-oriented person before this, so he was focused on philanthropy, good deeds, trying to help the community, and all the food preservation and processing that was mentioned before.
As a group, they have a lot of different ideas, but have never really thought about how to execute any of them. Much of this is because they're a younger group that has only existed for half of Ball's life. As an idealist, Ball wanted the group to focus on spirituality and the aforementioned good deeds rather than trying to make their ideals (such as the rejection of technology) into reality for society as a whole. It was more about living according to their beliefs: using as little technology as possible while living a "natural" life in New Amsterdam. We will add that this will be changing in the near future, and Quentin and Rey have the opportunity to see that in motion.
7. As you'd expect, their goals for the Displaced aren't as focused. They do believe the Displaced are evidence of the gods returning/waking up, but none of the worshippers have any special information like Ball himself had about their arrival in this world. In fact, they seem to be much like New Amsterdam's citizens in not quite grasping/believing that the Displaced are from another world.
Since they believe that people who are god-touched are meant to pursue their own aims with the gods' "permission" (so to speak), they want to help the Displaced reach their goals. To them, it's like helping a god succeed. As of right now, the Displaced haven't asked for a whole lot from them!
Let us know if there are any follow-up questions from this, and we can point you further in the direction you'd like to take!