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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. For his spine, he'd need to determine who can either erase a serial number or get the spine before a serial number is added. Basically: would this spine have been changed in some way so that it wouldn't be traced back, or did someone get one that had never entered the system? Given what he now knows about the Displaced being at Project Meadowlark, he could make assumptions that whoever runs or backs this project may be able to bypass many of the typical procedures. And if they are able to do that, what else can they do? What kind of person has this capability? And if they have the capability, who do they have connections to that helps build cybernetics of this scale?
2. For the dreams, you can have him reach out to the cultists here! We know you were on hiatus for the month, so feel free to hit this now if you'd like. That said! They won't be able to help with the Project Meadowlark-related parts of the dreams, but may be able to tell him a bit more about god touched people sharing dreams and experiences, which will link back to our first dream event and its dreams. It's unlikely to link back to Cassian's particular dream for his investigation, but he'll have some deets about the greater mythology of the group.
As for the hole it fills: his spinal surgery had to take place because he was in a medi-unit when they attempted to extract the blue stuff from one of the Displaced in the facility, which led to everything—including his powers—going haywire and shutting down. When this happened, the facility rumbled due to his powers. That said, the collective powers, mindlinked freaking out, violence on the workers there in the facility (as implied by one of our very first shared dreams) led to the power being shut off. When this depowering took place, Cassian required traditional surgery where a medi-unit normally could have fixed him up.
So, basically, it was the attempted extraction of the blue stuff that made it necessary for the surgery to take place, not Cassian himself. We did make the dream purposefully vague so that we preserved whacky dream tones and also to make way for some discussion of What it All Means. We do apologize for the whacky dream prose making things a little vague in places!
3. He'll find disturbingly little about it. Since the New Omsk facility was largely funded by the UN, someone had the ability to help shut it down and cut away any information that came out of there. Now, who seems to have connections to facilities around the world and can cause problems with them? We'll say that Cassian is free to assume that Johann may had a role in this cover up, which then would beg the question: how powerful is Johann? What is he capable of doing?
We'll add that this dovetails neatly with the findings in Antarctica, namely what William Clayton-Queen was able to dig up (covered here under hacking interlude). Unlike with New Omsk, which was a UN-funded and run facility, the facility in Antarctica wouldn't be able to be controlled the same way so they had to go through other means to stop information from getting out. Of course, William released all of that information at the end of the monster event, showing the cover up. Cassian can, again, feel free to make the connection between Johann's nearby lab and this one and whatever information Johann was trying to find. It's one part "what is Johann doing" and one part "how is he able to do it."
Let us know if you'd like us to answer any other questions or point you to more content you might have missed! We assume you like doing some of the digging yourself, but there's … a lot … so we're happy to help where needed!
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basically he will investigate the supply lines and any medical connections to outside labs (ie: non hospital orgs) that have ties to riverstone or giles bell. will johann turn up here too??? a mystery.
2) thanks for the clarification on this! i think i had definitely gotten the gist, but i was afraid to run with it in case i interpreted it completely wrong. (also, reached out to the cultists on the linked post, so shuffles away from that on this post)
3) ok so time for cassian to start poking a little more about mr. johann! are there any characters in game who have more info about him? where would be a good place to start drawing some johann strings together? cassian already has feelers in the big four corporations, are there any patterns cassian would notice about resources that would follow prior known areas johann's involved in? he's sort of... everywhere as a figure, so cassian will start looking for more concrete stuff. is there any information on how long the lab/facility in antarctica has been around?
4) can i make up a contact who currently works at riverstone, but came from/previously worked at new omsk? (i have a cool name for her and everything: safia chernogorova). i feel like she could be a good resource for a couple different prongs, and presumably those workers ended up somewhere. (unless... they didn't????) what would happen if cassian tracked them down? if she can exist, i would like cassian to find this woman.
no subject
1. After this long and twisty road, we will say that it will undoubtedly come down to Giles Bell having the capabilities to scrub this technology without it ever being entered into a system. Is it someone who currently works at Giles Bell, or simply has access to their supply line? Cassian has done most of the work here, so now he might want to focus in on Giles Bell to see who might have this ability.
2. 👍
3. Cassian can reach out to Cassius here. He should be able to ask some questions about Johann Grey to get some answers. Cassius also knows about the facilities around Antarctica, and Cassian can direct his questions about those there.
We also suggest reviewing the plot tidbits post gathering everything. There are some things on there that we think will interest Cassian at this stage of his investigation, especially now that the full picture is coming together.
4. Safia is a go! She doesn't know anything, including that New Omsk would be used for that report. She would add that it shouldn't be possible since everyone she knew had been relocated from that location prior to September 2510. Fishy, huh?
no subject
3. done o7 and i'll probably come back to johann here after talking with cassius and reading all the info over again!
4. SUPER FISHY, SAFIA. when exactly were they relocated? like, how many weeks/days/etc prior to september, and was everyone moved at once or more scattered to avoid suspicion? related, if cassian tracked down any other new omsk workers, would they all more or less have the same knowledge as safia? did they have a choice on where they were moved, or was it directed from someone higher up? *oH and what was the primary focus of the facility at new omsk?
no subject
1. Nothing new to note about the drug trials, but both Marcos and Cassian would be given the opportunity to sign up for new drug trials. While these won't be immediately metaplot important to the overall game, they would give some insight into how corporations are handling the recent run of monsters. Would you (or Trace, if you're in contact with her!) be interested in this?
Otherwise, this is a good way to get a foot in the door! As a reminder, Joseph Lynch was also connected to Giles Bell as the head of PR for Ibis, so that might be a lead for Cassian to chase.
4. It was over the summer leading up to the September event. Safia will say that she'll try to get in touch with her former coworkers, using various job sites and social media, and will come back and say that a few of those coworkers seem to have gone completely off the grid. All their profiles are gone, as well as any tags that pointed to them. The coworkers who went off the grid all left at the same time for a "really good opportunity" for their futures, while the rest had scattered relocations.
For the people who haven't gone off the grid that Safia could find, they would all say the same thing. They assume that the people who went off the grid are fine and working on something top secret in terms of confidentiality, likely in a contract with the UN.
For the "off the grid" folks, they all have a similar profile: unmarried, excellent in their fields, and willing to take a leap because they don't have a lot of ties to their previous life. They would have been offered this chance for relocation versus being relocated against their wills. One or two of the people that Cassian talks to will be jealous that they were given this chance. If further pressed, they'll say that they don't think they could have taken the offer because of their lifestyle (they're all married), but they wish their work was recognized.
To simplify this:
"Off the grid" scientists: Unmarried, very intelligent, likely to leap at a major scientific discovery because it could further their career. Offered a job for relocation, never said where they were relocating to but they all left at the same time. All of them were geophysicists.
"On the grid" scientists: most are married, intelligent but concerned with their partner. Otherwise might be profiled to be unlikely to take an off the grid job. Not offered relocation jobs, and some of them are envious. They were relocated in a scattered way to other locations. Some were geophysicists, some specialized in other fields.
Finally, the New Omsk laboratory specialized in geophysics, with some environmental geology and geoecology. These scientists were working in tandem to study the shifting environment in the region around the laboratory.
no subject
1a. he will also just look up the general layout of the cyberkinetics structure at giles bell and use this as a stepping stone to seek out staff involved, looking for people who might seem more likely to talk.
how big is the giles bell cyberkinetics department? is there a director in charge? who do they currently have partnerships with, whether research or business?*
*i don't want you to do unnecessary work so lets just say cassian would only be looking for significant or familiar names, whether it's individuals or organizations.
1b. as for lynch, how long was he working for giles bell? are any of the staff he brought with him to the governorship notably connected to giles bell too?
4. IN! TER! EST! ING! is it like they never existed, or more just they literally disappeared after a certain point?
no subject
1. Sounds good!
1a. Giles Bell's cybernetics and biomedical departments are pretty massive. They work closely with Vyonation and Riverstone to ensure that their cybernetics interface perfectly with the neural implants, which Giles Bell was largely responsible for developing. It probably isn't necessary for him to track down anyone else at Giles Bell, because...
1b. Lynch has worked for Giles Bell since around his mid-20s, and he's now in his 60s, so quite a while! He was head of PR for an arm of Giles Bell called Ibis, which originally pioneered the development of replacement organs as well as the medi-units. Currently, they continue to work to advance and perfect this technology, and Lynch's high position speaks to his good reputation. Ibis does not work on cybernetics directly, although they do work with the department to ensure that their medi-units are compatible. Feel free to come up with colleagues Lynch brought along as staff from Giles Bell! He would definitely have a couple of them around him.
It's also worth noting that Silena received a plot tidbit about Lynch and Henries! This might be something Cassian wants to dig into more.
4. The scientists at the New Omsk lab died when the facility collapsed. Because they were sequestered in the lab itself, it isn't so much that they were erased from the record, but that they died and their families weren't told why. Cassian might want to reach out to Ren for further information from the documents Ren received!
no subject
was new omsk confused with another facility? in prior comments, you said they were all transferred out of new omsk before it was shut down, and in the latest one it says it collapsed.
does off the grid mean they died in reality? or is this a reference to something else? their special, secretive project after omsk having gotten them killed? (spinetail????)
no subject
4. The scientists from New Omsk who went off the grid weren't erased, but instead died in the Spinetail incident. When Cassian checks in with Ren, he'll see the initials for those scientists (now that he's identified them) on the documentation that Ren received.