PLAYER PLOTS | 2h APRIL

[groundrules]

Hello, busy people! Just patching together details of the two upcoming optional player mini-plots you folks have nimbly sewn together!

HEISTING HOMIES

With so much salt in this city, eating the rich was never tastier. IC and OOC momentum has been building, so now's probably a good time to iron out who's doing what.

As per our beautiful calendar, the merchant vessels are discharging in the second half of the month, and the auction houses start earning sweet coin over the 17-24 April period — meaning more eyes will be on them and on guaranteeing safe transfer of the revenues they earn, than on the bank itself.

I hadn't planned on a mod-led log for this, as I was thinking you might want to do your own posts — but let me know if you need me to put up a post on this on 17 April.

Otherwise...

MAKE IT RAIN

• A SCRAWNY BANK MAP APPEARS. Like a manta ray on Sci-Fi steroids. • The bank is publicly open between 6:00 - 18:00 and locked up with magical reinforcements overnight. • GENERAL ACTIVITY the public at large is welcome on the ground floor open area, and in the spots for lenders and currency exchange. The government finance and library keep are open to administrative personnel and rare government officials. High-ranking merchants might be permitted to escort their goods for storage, or to meet on the upper floor. The lower floor is exclusively open to bank personnel. • SECURITY: armed lightly — swords, batons, some rare talisman-crafted binding magic that can temporarily paralyse targets, if they're struck. Day-to-day security forces are neither magic users, nor adept at casting magic. GROUND FLOOR: 25-30 sentries, shift changes midday local time. UPPER FLOOR: 15 men, shift changes 11:00. LOWER FLOOR: 15 men, shift changes 10:00 and 14:00. • Civilian administrative personnel (lenders, cashiers, servants) are unlikely to risk their hides to defend the goods. • SLEEP CURSE: cross into the casting regions (helpfully delineated by purple carpets), fall down dead asleep for four hours. Security sentry badges have been magically enhanced to protect against the curse. The guards have a curse-breaking password that will wake the affected instantly or render speakers immune for eight hours. The password changes daily. • Actual vaults are locked securely and might need a lock-breaker. Unless someone's got some interesting picking skills in their satchel — hire a NPC? • PLANNING THREAD HERE.

ROW THEM BOATS

As merchant ships gather to sell human alongside inanimate wares, Archeval ( darkeststars ) player Loren said our resident Sith Lord would be prime game to raid some boats and release some of the (wo)man-shaped merchandise. He will lead this fine expedition, with some help from NPCs and from any other characters willing to throw their hats in the ring.

This plot allows us a window of opportunity to try our hand at a test drive meme — so let's see how we do, and how we like the idea. Some key points:

JUST ANOTHER SAVIOUR COMPLEX

• Calendar dixit: the weather starts deteriorating again over 26-30 April, to certain supernatural effects. • Ahead of that, a NPC post on 24 or 25 April (TBD!) will alert characters of the arrival of the vessel Imperious (that's right, Archeval), carrying a substantial number of slaves and potentially some otherworldly captives. Characters will be ICly asked to join the rescue, but participation is optional on an OOC level. • Scout information from the so-far absentee Merchant will relay some of the obstacles ahead. • 27 April: we will have a combined log for existing characters playing out the rescue, as well as any new characters interested to test drive. • This event will count as game canon for any characters that participate. • APPLICATIONS OPEN: 3 May. • QUESTIONS/COMMENTS/CHAT THREAD HERE.

Comments

CAPTIVE RESCUE

[groundrules]

Questions/comments go here — though some of them might have to wait until you receive further info in the first NPC post. I'll link back to this OOC thread at the time too.

PARTICIPANT LIST

[groundrules]

Reply here with the character name + journal if you decide you'd like your character in for this, and I'll compile — but you can always choose to just tag in as / if you feel like it.

Lists are mostly for convenience, if you guys need to know whom to contact OOCly.

Lead: Archeval | darkeststars
Mina Ashido | pinkxeno
Eleven | bearshermark
Lan Wangji | downswing
Rachel | thehoneybadger
Wei Wuxian | weifinder
Bai Mingyu | descendency
Lee Chang | jeoha
Xiao Xingchen | binghua

[weifinder]

Just generally noting that Wei Wuxian would also want to be involved! Do they have an actual plan for where these captives are... going. Do they have stockpiled translation crystals and heat crystals and clothing. Do you have an escape point, are you sinking the ship so they think everyone drowned--

[groundrules]

T B A, hooligans :)

[groundrules]

No, but really — some of this will be answered in the NPC/closer-to OOC posts, I think! This is mostly to let you guys know... there will be captive rescue, part II!

[weifinder]

Hahaha yeah, these weren't serious questions (yet) since there's going to be information upcoming, these are just more likely to be "hey I have broken into a labour camp and freed people while killing other people and running away to a land of the cursed dead before so I've got my own concerns" as you do!

[bearshermark]

I for one am looking forward to panicked scrambling about all of this :popcorn:

where does one hide a 6'7" mountain of a man with purple hair

[darkeststars]

So far this asshole in charge of this whole idea has literally zero plans. We'll see when it gets closer to time, things might change depending on the info we get of course. But if anybody else wants to chime in with where the gang might put some NPC slaves Arche will certainly be receptive to hearing about it. If we have nowhere good to send them, he's literally cutting everyone's bonds, tossing them off the boat and calling it a day. (Which is horrible but he has backstory reasons for being cavalier about it lol.)

[weifinder]

JUST REMINDING THAT IT IS THE MIDDLE OF FREEZING WINTER AND ALL THOSE TOSSED OVERBOARD WITHOUT SOME WARMTH WARD WILL DIE OF HYPOTHERMIA WITHIN MINUTES

[darkeststars]

Oh man, not literally in the water! He's a little awful but he's not quite that awful lol!

[pinkxeno]

QUESTION

Because slavery is bad
can mina sink the boats after the rescue

you know just casually dropping some acid into the hull and everywhere she passes by

[bearshermark]

What if they're commandeering one to sail away on

[pinkxeno]

does anyone know how to sail? or where to, even! It's an icy ocean, right? it'd be bad if they got stuck in the middle of ice )=

[groundrules]

Very honest answer: in theory yes, to consequences.

In practice — I don't know yet what the setup is going to look like!

Also, there might be other people on that boat, is Mina okay with that... sailors and stuff...

[pinkxeno]

I can wait until that's figured out, it's just something that crossed my mind - mina would want to stop this from happening again

i figured if they are near the port, sailors could get rescued easy or swim. In theory!

[darkeststars]

Well, one of them is named the Imperious so I can basically guarantee that at some point Darth Imperius is putting holes through it, lol. We'll see how the logistics work out when we start getting NPC posts though.

[topoiran]

LATE but can Karsa use some help with the diversion because Xunxian can tell the fishes and birds to help...

Also if more info should be shared by the merchant...

[groundrules]

It appears that the Good People are looking to procure 13,000 coins for her, which will allow Karsa to procure explosives and distract with shiny fire.

I am in a position to say there will definitely be some sea creatures on premise. If you want, fish or seagulls can inform Xunxian when the ship arrives, to give him an early heads-up. They can also do some reconnaissance on his behalf, or help divert as you like — thought I'd suggest waiting til the tdm/event write-up because there is one thing... I don't think anyone is expecting yet.

[topoiran]

Sign him up for intel on when it's coming, now that the information that there will be a ship will have him asking.

The rest, I'll wait for, yes.

[jeoha]

Okay so Lee Chang is going to go interview some of the women that were brought to the city on the Imperious, and learn what he can about the ship. Specifically, he would be looking for things like layout; how the rotations are structured; how many guards/crew on deck and how many sleeping at any given time; how quickly they turn over stock when they reach port; if there are any guards that are particularly susceptible to certain kinds of temptation; what the number of 'skeleton crew' would be left on the ship in case of emergency; what the slave cages are made of and how they are locked; if they were ever taken somewhere else on the ship (like the head); etc.

He won't be asking all these questions of every woman - he is not going to push hard for answers where it looks like he might be upsetting them, but he will pay them for any information gathered, and if they seem like they may want help escaping at a later point, take down their information to talk to the merchant about.

How much coin would he need and how much information would he get?

[groundrules]

These women, if found, will likely have been sold into service — so the price to speak with them would have to cover the fee for hours of service of their time (typically prostitution or hard labour), plus some change for their trust and confidence. It will depend on how many women Lee Chang manages to find. I'd imagine he wouldn't be able to locate more than two or three, so call it 1,200 to 1,800.

It's worth bearing in mind that these women would have been brought in under very dire circumstances, left bound and constrained to their hull cabin — so they won't have clear or reliable information on many of these questions. Because they would have been brought in as the main merchandise, versus this voyage that also brings in the weapon, they would have experienced fewer guards on watch.

Anecdotally, they can share that most captives are held in the hull, and guarded by two dozen men or so. They wouldn't be able to comment on things like rotation or crew on deck. As they were brought in as resisting merchandise and their trade is frowned upon, but falls under the umbrella of a prominent merchant, the customs experience would have been expedited. An hour in customs, mostly Torsten shaking hands. Most of them would not have experienced slave cages, just fettering and long periods of confinement.

I will condition Lee Chang getting this information as follows: one of the women will want his name.

[jeoha]

Alright nice

I WILL GIVE IT A THINK and get back to you

[somebadnews]

WELP. Here's some super late plans (sorry sorry): Five is going to have to cameo this business. He eavesdrops on everything, and gives zero care to telling anyone what he's doing, so you might have to deal with the thirteen year old appearing in the middle of everything for the sole purpose of finding his family. That's a big teleport jump so he'd be stretching to make it on board from the docks but possible ?? if he hops from other nearby ships ??

He's still probably not at 100% after the super-perfect flawless heist, so they might crap out on him again. And then... it's fine, an exit strategy will come to him.

Yadda yadda. He'd very much like to grab his sister before she destroys the world, and might even recognize the light from her powers from far off, so you know. I'M just getting my ducks in a row before diving in.

[groundrules]

I think most folks are hanging out on the new thread, plans-wise!

Anyway, happy for him to teleport Vanya away, assuming the player is okay with that.

[somebadnews]

I can shimmy this over there for visibility just in case! But yes, plans are very vague and subject to change, and obviously ask permission from anyone who gets lucky via teleporting. I'm going to make it work.