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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. i would prefer a different way in! but he will be taking his time with riverstone and would investigate the company itself for a while before trying any kind of means to get inside. specifically, obviously, he is more interested in their cyberkinetics work and how closely they work with giles bell, and if there are any significant people/figures associated with riverstone cyberkinetics to start. also, do they have offices in any other significant cities? like, new oslo perhaps?
2. yes i have seen it! i'm excited to see where it all goes! :D
3. are there any more interesting wild conspiracy theories? even if it's not relevant, this is just me being curious, but also cassian would probably read them all haha.
3a. have the fault lines changed any from the current earth? if cassian looked into the actual scientific possibilities, would there be a pattern in the fault lines to back up the public explanation?
5. i think he would work on becoming friendly with some of the receptionists first, which is evidently turning into his MO in new amsterdam. i'd like to say this is what he was doing while i was on hiatus in august, starting pre the zerzura event!
6. new question! running off his conversation with el, cassian will be looking more closely into overlap between the big three corporations, such as significant business deals or public image of how they cooperate, and potential big blow ups/disagreements. this also ties into riverstone, he would look into what connections to any of the other big companies it has, or any joint projects.
6a. babies!! that is, el brought up cyberkinetics before implants in infants with birth defects, so cassian would look into how common this is, if there are public stats. but he is more interested in how much effort giles bell puts into it and if they work with any other companies and/or specific people who might be attached to this kind of technological development. what makes it different from regular cyberkinetics and who has their toes in that pool?
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1. Do you think Cassian is likely to head out to New Beijing during our upcoming plot? That is where Riverstone's headquarters is located. Heading out there doesn't mean that he'll be helping Cassius in any way - he may even be going to prevent his fellow Displaced from doing something monumentally stupid. He could also just be using the free trip to check out Riverstone while he's there.
By the way, Riverstone does have some work coming out of New Oslo, but it's definitely not anything significant in nature.
Imagine the number of times we need to backspace either Cassius or Cassian to put the correct dude's name in there. Just imagine that as you read on!
3. A recent theory is that the government is trying to stage the end of the world to cause an influx of able-bodied workers out on the colonies. This theory is supplemented by the recent attack on New Amsterdam, and they posit that DAWN is not … really an AI, but a government plant to hide their overall goals. With this, they've been purposely causing seismic activity all over the globe, but that this could potentially destroy the planet itself.
Another theory is that the AI really do live, and they've been stealing government secrets and letting them loose. That's where the seismic activity comes from: hacking and screwing with government powers. The AI have also been developing monster-like creatures to attack and destroy the planet bit by bit. The "golden eyes" on many of these monsters is - in a very complicated way - proven to be the work of a malicious set of elite AI that specialized in torturing and killing humans back during the Xelkoven War. Needless to say, this one is flimsy and involves many, many leaps of logic.
3b. Nope! While the fault lines have developed from our time to 500 years from now in our hypothetical future, none of them would support the public theory. However, it won't seem like a cover up. Many seismologists are still working to explain what the heck happened out there.
5. Yep, that's fine! Do you want him to be at the stage where he's getting records yet?
6. Once Cassian begins digging, he'll start realizing how utterly … well, incestuous these companies are (at least on a business level). Board members from companies tend to be married to one another. Some people are brought in from other cities to take a job on the board, even if they were brought up in a corporation elsewhere. The corporations of Meadowlark's world are hideously oligarchical in how they practice business.
Yes, there is some competition between them. For instance, Vyonation feels as if they lack power compared to Giles Bell and Pulsar in New Amsterdam and they're seeking to have a larger part of the pot, but most of this seems to be based in greed. Most of the conflicts themselves are based in greed. There are occasions where employees have been poached to help another company get out ahead, but the end result won't immediately be apparent. Typically, this means it got dead ended in the records because it resulted in a government contract or something similar. If Cassian keeps going, he'll find that some of these individuals eventually do become political figures.
Digging far enough back, Cassian will also be able to see how Xelkoven was once one of the world's biggest corporations. While they output a lot of AIs and robotics, they also specialized in a hundred other areas. And then, following the AI war, they were sent into obscurity and ended. It seems as if they weren't just bought out, but … deleted, not unlike the AI themselves. It's as if the wealth and technology they had was unnecessary. Or, perhaps, it was already in the hands of other companies? Yes, given the way these things work, that's likely the case.
Basically, it's a capitalistic nightmare, and there seems to be an undocumented shift of power that happens among the world's corporations. They do seem to respect the territory claimed by other corporations in other cities, with Riverstone allowed the most freedom in where they might be able to set up. There is very little oversight, and there are many surnames that appear on the boards for many generations.
The push and pull of power won't be entirely clear, though. What are they aiming for when they're given so little oversight? What's motivating them? Is it really just greed and making the world rely on them? Well, that's definitely possible. They do seem to have had a major influence in how this specific version of Earth came about, especially with the territorial claims and understanding of those specific boundaries.
6a. This is still under Giles Bell's purview, though it is an exceedingly rare circumstance. Much of that is because most genetic modification happens upon conception, as the people of Meadowlark's world want to avoid potential birth defects. (If you've seen Gattaca, it's almost on that level.) The scientists of the world do a pretty decent job in avoiding them, but they aren't wizards. In addition, children conceived without the guidance of a doctor can still receive modification in the womb, but it may come with higher risks.
In some cases, these cybernetics are temporary. They can act as an organ while one is grown, giving a child a chance at life before they're ready for the transplant. Other times, they're with the child throughout their life, with very little stigma involved.
Finally, these numbers are public! Cassian would find them largely featured in articles and documents covering the risks of genetic modification, as well as what the scientists/doctors are seeking to avoid by helping the child pre-conception and eventually in the womb itself.
no subject
i think yes, cassian would be very interested in getting to new beijing! even outside his curiosity over riverstone, he's very keen on seeing more of the world, but since he's already looking into riverstone he would use the free trip to check things out on their homefront. should i move this specifically to the event planning ooc post?
no subject
Yes, please do!
As a head's up, we're wrapping up the bugs information on our end now that Veronica's off vacation. We'll be getting that to you once we have all the little bits of juicy details sorted out.
no subject
a quick clarification about the 2510 earthquakes, since i've learned new beijing was prepared for them too. i know new amsterdam, new oslo, and new venice were hit, but was this a worldwide power outage? if not, what other cities were hit by it? it seems to be global but i can't seem to find anything in any of the threads about the exact scale of the earthquake/outages.
5. yes re: the records, i would like to say he's gained access a little bit pre new beijing but definitely post!
also as a side note, i am definitely trying to compile things cassian has learned into a network post! my goal is to get it up before christmas.
no subject
The power outage wasn't worldwide or expected on most levels. New Oslo, New Amsterdam, and New Venice certainly didn't know that it was coming. Some cities are better prepared against power outages because of the trouble the city itself might face. For instance, New Tokyo is generally built up to be prepared for seismic activity that might cause problems - since it's a city literally built on the ocean - but wasn't prepared for the type of extreme cold and blizzard that happened once the Displaced came out of the dreams. New Beijing (and Riverstone's scientists, to be more precise) were aware for some reason of the incoming seismic activity on that particular day!
We'll say now that you've figured it out that naming exact cities was actually a red herring! A lot of cities got hit. Some cities didn't - though in some cases, it was based entirely on luck! What can further be concluded is that it's weird that an earthquake would be predicted to impact New Beijing and New Oslo, even in this globally relocated world. Heck, that's true for New Amsterdam as well - which Cassian will now be able to physically put together, having taken a train from one to the other. How could an earthquake have such a large effect on the world? Hint: the answers are out there.
re: the records, that's fine! Let us know if you need anymore information beyond what we've already provided.
We're looking forward to a post from Cassian on this! As we've said before, we've enjoyed working with you on this, even we've laid a few red herrings and false leads along the way. As we said before, there's still a much bigger picture to solve, but it's been fun writing the puzzle pieces and detours for you along the way.
no subject
is it possible for cassian to find the actual earthquake epicenter? like is there a map out on the big old internet? the outage wasn't global, but did the earthquake itself have ripple effects? or was it more several earthquakes at once?
re: new oslo, this is the first mention i've seen of them being prepared too! is that something he'd be able to find out more about once they make that trip to new oslo, or would he pick up hints on it through digging in the medical records?
i have been enjoying this a lot, mods! i'm excited to see where it goes and to take this angle a little more publicly.
no subject
We'll hit you back with everything on our usual plot engagement day, we just wanted to clear this up since we know there are threads in progress!
no subject
The reported epicenter is just off the coast of what was once the state of Washington. The details surrounding this earthquake are surprisingly vague, and the facility that reported the seismic activity at the time – based 100 miles east of New Omsk – closed down the month after the report was released due to retracted funding. If Cassian compares this report to other reports of seismic activity, he would find that the details are lacking. The report itself theorizes that the Juan de Fuca plate, located near what was once a populated part of the North American continent, collided with other tectonic plates surrounding it. However, there is little information confirming this, especially when seismologists are generally better at tracking these plates and helping with reports in advance. There were questions on this event that are left unanswered, though the report itself seems to go unquestioned.