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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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no subject
So, with that in mind, Kyna is going to be looking at folk heroes, more specifically historical (or questionably historical) rulers, military heroes, and saints who have a distinctly mythological bent to their story. For example, Joan of Arc’s visions, Romulus’ connection with Mars, King Arthur’s everything, etc. She wants to see if there’s a familiar link between stories like these. She’ll also be looking for mentions of visions, dreams, supernatural powers, and of course, the blue glow, plus similar connections in any famous weapons or objects those figures were said to have (Excalibur? All those magical Celtic spears? That kind of thing.)
Kyna’s background is mostly in folklore and mythology, so she won’t know much about art history or archaelogy as it applies to these heroes, and might be at more of a loss there. She’ll be trying to dig up information in museums, research institutes that are open to the public, and online, but won’t be trying to get a job to help in her search right off the bat. If asked, she’ll just lie and say she’s a grad student doing her thesis on folk heroes and the concept of apotheosis. If that doesn’t get her anywhere, then she’ll try getting a job as an intern, low level research assistant, or whatever she can manage that would get her foot in the door. It's totally cool if this stuff takes a while for her to dig through, because it's a Lot.
So, more specifically:
1. Will Kyna find any folk heroes or famous figures beyond the ones the Displaced found at the ruins that seem to have links to the blue glow? If so, will she discover anything that expands on how those powers or mythological connections seemed to affect them, or how they were used?
2. Will any of this ring similar to the experiences of the Displaced? Will she find anything that hints at how those people gained their powers or “blessings”? Do any of those famous weapons or relics seem similar in glowy function to the ones the Displaced found?
3. Do any of those stories differ from the ones she’s familiar with? The versions in her world are essentially identical to the real world.
4. Will she find any evidence of cults or religions similar to Ball’s that worshipped those figures, and is there anything that stands out among them? Is there anything that would link those groups together as being part of a network or an older religious tradition?
no subject
We'll start off with saying that Kyna isn't going to find very many leads (at first), but hopefully what we set up here will give you some direction.
1&2. So, first off, Kyna will need to expand her reach beyond the blue glow itself. In the ruins - especially the New Oslo ones - there were other colors, as well. They were depicted similarly to what is on the shrines around New Amsterdam. Through that, she might be able to determine that blue isn't the only color in play here. That will help expand her reach and give her more chances to find evidence!
We suggest that Kyna begins to draw some conclusions about the figures that were there. King Herald was depicted at New Oslo's gate, but his historicity is up for debate (and we're fine with Kyna knowing this!). On the other hand, St. Olaf is also pictured. It's possible that she's already done this work, and that's fine.
The tricky part is where she'll be moving from there. A lot of these stories will ring true to the experiences of the Displaced, but she can also see how the Displaced are becoming mythological in their own rights at the moment. How do people explain the unexplained? The issue here is that Kyna will begin to see stories that align with what she knows, but she'll need to be able to get her hands on manuscripts. A lot of these fell into private collections, and are not easy to find transcribed. Being able to see images may be a better clue than text, she'll just need to figure out how to get there!
3. The stories are, nominally, the same with some wiggle room to be expected of different universes. For example, King Herald's story is similar to the Wikipedia entry. But it's through digging deeper that she may be able to find further clues and how these people may have been treated on the "ground level" and away from centralized religion and kings.
4. Not immediately. However, by digging into more regional religions, she may be able to find some clues. This is where we're going to toss some medieval historian jargon at you. While the Pope during the medieval period had a lot of control over how noblemen and women experienced religion, people outside of that reach (typically peasants) were another story altogether. In more extreme cases, this led to things like the Cathars rising up within remote communities. In less extreme cases, it would lead to a woman within the town having various remedies and superstitions. Much of it would be vague, unnamed, and not immediately traceable.
For this, how this would be perceived would probably be more readily found within these peasant communities. That doesn't mean that there weren't important figures that likely received notoriety because of their relation to the glowing glowy stuff—it's more that any practice of faith or religion like Ball's would be more on a community level (and therefore difficult to unearth thanks to the dearth of records coming out of peasantry).
Here's a decent overview on popular religion in medieval Europe: Popular Religion in the Middle Ages: 1000-1300. + A decent article, as well.
no subject
Essentially, Kyna’s assumption here is that there’s more truth to these stories than fiction, and that while they may have been embellished over the centuries or millennia, that these folk heroes really did have supernatural powers and were chosen by something.
Since she’s come around to the god theory, that’s what she’ll be shifting her focus to. The god-touched notion feels like an extension of the idea of divinely chosen heroes that are pretty ubiquitous in myth, and she’s looking for proof that those stories are real in this world. She assumes (or desperately hopes) that not every single god from every single culture actually exists here, so what she’s trying to do is narrow down what gods might be real, or where the origin of them might be.
For example, most cultures have gods of death, or goddesses of fertility. Her theory is that here, maybe humanity had some kind of interaction with, say, a divine force or some sort of power that caused death that then developed into multiple deities depending on the culture. She’s assuming that the Displaced have been chosen by a force like this in the same way Odysseus was chosen by Athena or whatever.
But! Kyna does have a lot of familiarity with the history of witchcraft, so if anything points her in that direction, she’ll seize on it pretty immediately. Medieval history and belief is less her jam, and that will be something she’ll probably have to tag team with someone. However, because a lot of this is still pretty broad, and because she talked about this a bit with Sam, she thinks her best bet is focusing on getting a look at some of those manuscripts and primary sources first, and then working from there.
So, for specific questions:
1. Are there any public records of where those pieces/artifacts might have ended up? I’m thinking about the way some big auction houses will announce the price that something sold for and who bought it, especially if it's someone well known. There are times that buyers don’t stay anonymous, or there are some private collectors that become well-known for their collections. Would she be able to find mentions of anyone like that, or any big sales that might point her in the right direction, especially collectors with a specific interest in the time periods the gate ruins are from?
2. Kyna will find the idea of pagan/cult sites really interesting, too. Are there any that still exist today beyond the gate ruins, specifically ones that might have been incorporated into the modern megacities or that are still in use, specifically in cities like New Amsterdam or New Oslo? New Beijing has some reclaimed landmarks too, but do any of those have any historical religious significance specifically?
no subject
Just as a big head's up before we get started, we've solidified some of our lore about this since you first wrote in, so we apologize for anything that seems inconsistent. We'll be happy to work with you on this!
1. First off, she'll want to date the gates. For your reference:
Cairo - Ancient Egypt
Oslo - Probably around 1000 to 1200
Everest - Sometime after 1000, but before the Rongbuk Monastery was established there in 1902.
Rio - Definitely 17th century.
As an additional reference, a part of William's hacking in Antarctica unearthed some stuff that would be of interest to Kyna. He released this before he disappeared. The link to that is here.
Looking into these, she'll definitely have the most luck getting things that would relate to Rio. That's after more printing started occurring. The thing is, these manuscripts would likely not be from the Brazilian region, instead being from Portugal because of the whole colonialism thing.
She'll be able to find some collectors who do have manuscripts from 17th century Portugal. She may also want to look into the late medieval Books of Hours to see if she can find anything, as these would be privately commissioned devotional manuals. The big thing about what's in Brazil is that it shows people with status were buying into that religion, so it didn't necessarily need to be an offshoot in theological understanding.
In short: the answer is yes! She'll want to look for imagery that's less associated with sacred geometry and more with the colors and iconography in the New Rio gate.
2. The big two beyond the gates are obviously New Amsterdam (where they had to complete the gates ritual) and New Beijing (where former Beijing monuments make up a part of the city). As established in the simulation event, these are also two of the older megacities. New Amsterdam's location isn't near any significant historical location, so it seems odd that it was chosen. We do suggest hitting up Tifa (since Yennefer has looked into this!) and drawing some obvious intentionality conclusions. We do intend for this to be straightforward: the gates were there before the megacities!