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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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Pardon any mess, I'm trying to figure out how to get all of this down in one post and still be coherent with it! Per Jason's conversation with El here, he's looking to get a few resources from El to help along his other goal: overtaking the underground bits and pieces at a time, which was slotted to happen at a much later date, but given the direction some of the last event took, Jason's trying to speed it up to take the gangs' attentions off of Morningstar itself. And with Roni's comment here to the plot engagement, it looks like you guys have a plan on where to start with that!
With the last event, Loki got hold of a few of the ID scrambler masks for Jason; he also has an engineer, Abel, who will be offering his assistance to break them down and sort them out so whether or not El does provide a hand won't quite dictate if Jason does go forward with his plans, just the when, how, and how much prep time he needs to accomplish it! I'm including this just in case El intends to say no, because:
He's fully intending on taking down the gang heads he's aware of, killing them off, and establishing himself as head of the Warlocks and Kings, before moving his way around the underground and taking over the rest of it. Jason has experience in canon pulling apart drug rings and organizations, he's had a few months to note down who is who and who he would need to tear down to get to where he wants, he's willing to be ruthless and put them down (the ones with known histories committing acts Jason personally doesn't approve of, he wouldn't kill anyone who doesn't meet his standards of death-worthy) and has supplies (from Loki's personal hidden stash and things he's been building up himself) to help him along. In addition, Jason has a few friends (Kovacs, Laura, (possibly) Caroline) who he would ask for a more direct hand in taking them down--and he's working on picking up a few additional folks, too.
For efficiency, he'd keep most of his large hits down to a single night so that the underground wouldn't suspect he was coming for them until it was a bit too late. The kills would be one hit (he's got his shadows he can use, knives, etc) so they couldn't call for help, and would be (for as much as he can help it) while they were alone. Jason would be using an edited ID scrambler that would not match the ID of the scrambler tech Morningstar uses for this, too.
Given the amount of deaths, he'd used the instability among the gangs' ranks to work his way up and in to overtake their criminal rings, merge the two gangs together and create something new for himself. Of course--this would all take a lot of time, but those are his longterm goals with it. And Jason is looking less for watching over every corner of those two gangs, and more for keeping their noses out of shit he doesn't want them messing with (Morningstar in particular) and into things he is interested in getting more information on (the displaced's circumstance).
Additionally! He also asked Dawn/Cassius to contact him here so he could 'help' find the other AI Cassius was looking for. Jason does not have intentions of actually being helpful, his plan is to more figure out what the hell Cassius is doing and figure out how to take down Cassius himself, because he really doesn't appreciate all the bodies. He wants the information he mentioned early on, and would go as far as to find the AIs to get it.
I've had a few players reach out to me regarding this so I'm curious as to where that'd go, too!
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As far as the El (and Gaby) question goes, the two of them will talk amongst themselves after Gaby's conversation with Jason and Loki, and ultimately decide that they'll grant him his requests / strike this deal with him. Again, it will be with the assumption that he's going to hold up his end of things as far as taking heat off of Morningstar. Also, Gaby is going to mention in the ongoing thread with Jason that she would prefer he do whatever he's planning without killing people, because she's pacifistic that way. While he doesn't have to conform to this, it might affect later interactions. El will reach out and send over the blueprints he asked for, and then go through the process of erasing his old identity and giving him a new ID. To clarify, this means that he loses everything tied to that old account (money, job, housing, etc.) and would essentially have to "start over" with a totally new life. Obviously people he'd met and interacted with in person would still know him and the other Displaced could help him work around some of these hurdles, but that would be the idea. His new account also would not be tied to any comments he made as Matches Malone on the network. We'll also need to add his new ID information to the Taken list, so please let us know what he'd come up with!
As for Jason's plan with the gangs, that sounds good! However, we'll need some clarification on who he's going after. If Jason is planning on hitting just figures in the Kings and Warlocks, that will be fine, but if he's doing more than that we'll need some more specifics. If it's the former, for short term consequences you can assume Jason is successful with all his hits, whenever he chooses to do those. Due to how quickly information travels, Jason won't be able to hit more than 5 individuals in one evening between the two gangs working on his own. After that, people will start getting suspicious and go to ground. For more, he will need to formally enlist more people.
There will still be some lingering chaos within the ranks after the last event, so the backlash of these deaths will be particularly chaotic. There will be more violence in the weeks following, both between and within the two gangs. Even though both gangs were hit, each gang will be suspicious of the other. As a relative newcomer, Jason won't be above suspicion, especially because everyone will be paying close attention to how the new power vacuum gets filled. It will be up to him to figure out how to gain power without getting killed himself. Those loyal to the dead leaders will be looking to snap up a target in order to consolidate authority to themselves, and Jason will have to deal with these people by winning them over or other means.
All told, neither the Kings or the Warlocks will be doing great after this. Both will be struggling to re-establish cash flow, and tensions between both gangs will be high.
Finally, as for Cassius, we're going to have him reach out to interested parties later!
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Jason would ask that the background given to "Jason Todd" be pretty average and normal: a normal family life, normal grades in school, maybe a background in some popular sport in high school, a normal career that ended approximately two or three weeks before El is assigning it to him. He'd hand over some stupidly mundane pictures of himself and Loki to backdate a social media account to around that time posting something about "finding himself" with the love of his life or some mushy shit like that.
Basically, he's using this as an excuse to completely go under cover during daytime hours. He'll get some colored contact lenses and style his hair different, change his body language and clothing style during the day to match, too. Look he's got some plans.
He will have Takeshi Kovacs and Caroline Forbes helping take down specific people within both gangs--most likely giving Caroline a few more names due to her enhanced speed and strength. Jason will let Gaby know that he'll try to keep the deaths to a minimum, and will instead focus on debilitating the gang members instead: causing injuries that even advanced tech won't be able to fix entirely, and will therefore take them out of commission (taking a few fingers, lobbing off a hand, injuring spines and digging knives into skulls at just the right spot to render them effectively braindead without murdering them. see, look! he can keep from murder) but he will let her know that he doesn't completely control the individuals he's working with. Jason will also not give them names of those that are working with him, since he's not tattling.
Going after other gangs is more of a longterm goal; for this specific plot, it would just be the Kings and the Warlocks. He'll also be leaving behind a note (in blood / carved into their skin / however he and Kovacs+Caroline can figure out) with the location to an abandoned building in the shittier area of town.
Where he'll be waiting, with a nice bag full of body parts collected off those they've taken down, in a nice new designed ID scrambler (even if he needs to use the blinding colors, he'll keep them under the red. look he's gotta be stylish it's important) that doesn't match up to any of the tech Morningstar has, and let them know he's their new leader, if they don't like it they can get the same treatment.
(Kovacs and Caroline will also have their own, he wouldn't leave them out)
And he'll start it off with some nice new ideas on how to get money going back into gangs (some nice companies to hit), the benefits of mashing them both together(which he knows will cause tension, he's looking forward to it) and promising them use of tech that'll help them get even more resources.
Jason is not above using his own new abilities to assist with this, too. He'll be wearing a very, very thick top to hide the blue glow, going so far as to wrap himself up with whatever it takes to get it to stop shining through. If anyone tries to fight back with him at his "meeting" of sorts, he'll use shadows as bullets / knives / mouth covers to shut them up. Not killing, but taking them out enough to keep them quiet.
Let me know if any of this doesn't work, and I'll figure something else out! Jason is running off the assumption both gangs wouldn't want to pull in law enforcement for gang business, if they would he'd have backup plans for that too.
And I'm not quite sure what timeline this would be running off of just yet, as it depends on Caroline+Marcos' thing, as well as when he's able to get the masks done. He's having Abel assist him in figuring out that tech, and I'll figure out a good date once I get a good portion of the bigger details figured out.
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All this sounds good!
We will want you to touch base and provide more details for: "And he'll start it off with some nice new ideas on how to get money going back into gangs (some nice companies to hit)... and promising them use of tech that'll help them get even more resources." But feel free to follow up with that at your leisure, since the bulk of this plot has yet to go down yet.
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It'd be a lot of empty promises, tbh. He'd show off what he's capable of, show off his id scramblers, and give lines about earning it. Since El was willing to hand over blueprints--Jason will be using those to get a mask for Kovacs and Loki, too. Kovacs will be (eventually) taking a place as Jason's right hand man, and Jason will be pretty adamant about how Kovacs earned his place and his toys!
Jason will also be taking advantage of Loki's weapon cache, since he offered to share! But again--it'll be a show of force and of tools he has, but he won't be sharing with any of the gang members for a while.
He just wants to keep them on their toes and waiting for it!
Re: the tech anyway! Any really detailed plans would wait until he established his place among them better. And he'll likely go to El or Gaby for a good hitlist.
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Sounds great! Reach out to us when it's time for that!
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For the initial plot I just want to note down a date of November 27th! For posterity.
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Just to verify: given the assistance of Kovacs, Caroline(+Marcos), and Laura--is a headcount of seventeen victims alright? Five for Jay, five for Kovacs, seven for Caroline with Marcos--and Laura helping with quick transports.
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That sounds fine. Thanks for the follow-up!