activity check + admin

[groundrules]

Happy Hallowmonth, merry October, greetings to the third quarter — hope you're all unwinding!

ACTIVITY CHECK

Below is the list of characters for whom sufficient activity wasn't found in September. Please comment here to reclaim a character by 5 October or if their activity was missed!

Lorna Dane | The Gifted
Okita Souji | Hakuoki
Su Xunxian | Oh! My Emperor
Jens Macher | Triangle Strategy — two consecutive strikes, cannot be reclaimed

Unfortunately, very few people are using character tags right now — please do, or else your activity is very easy to miss, and we may need to move to a system where everyone tracks their own AC. Thank you!

ADMIN

■ UPDATED: October calendar + the latest installment of Clockwork Serthica story so far.

■ Our event/test drive remains active until 14 October — chef kisses to everyone making the newbies feel our version of welcome, which may or may not involve a bear! If you exhaust what there's to do early and want more, holler here, and we'll figure out something cute in the Mouse House.

■ For Jim and Finn, assume their mannequin friend creepily makes its way down in the Mouse House. Viktor's J-8S droid also follows. Kaneki, you're on your own finding dead meat here, buddy — but it does taste weirdly much more filling than what Minaras had to offer...

■ You'll get a Serthica status update on 19 October, but now's a good time to incorporate any plots/plans/adventures you folks want to explore in Serthica this month. Please drop off your suggestions and talk among each other — anything from 'raid a clock' to 'hold a three-thousand droid tango session in the square' accepted.

■ As characters resurface from the U n w i n d i n g, there's scope to mess with passport papers and switch up some allegiances. Drop a line by <5>October if you want your character to be reassigned from Eidris to Minaras, or the other way around — but know their false identity & role would have to re-written then, too. As previously, characters can still travel across the two areas. We may need to RNG this, if more than eight characters want to switch.

■ ...yes, we will wake up Zenobius this month.

■ Per last year's fine example: Halloween poll — how hard do we want to go? This is already mystery/fantasy/horror, so some of the flavour will be there anyway.

Comments

WISH WELL - PLAYERS BE PLOTTING

[groundrules]

Drop a line here (and best to summarise it in your comment headline too, if you can!) with something neat you'd like to organise or pursue with your character in October. Cue that great fiend, the player event. We can also try to incorporate some of this stuff in bigger plot updates too!

Absolutely no such thing as a bad suggestion, whether heavily plotty, SoL or out of the box. Feel free to talk to each other in the comments!

helping people in the mouse house and/or possible fun/games for the kids?

[thedreamer]

Sort of in the background since they've been in Serthica, the Doctor has wanted to do whatever he can to better things for the people (especially the children) in the Mouse House, and I believe there are other characters with a similar want, or perhaps have already done some things as well! Depending on what has maybe already been done or what anyone might be interested in doing, I'd love your thoughts if anything piques your interest:

Ideas:
► Money is pooled together and we work out the logistics of...what they can reasonably even do (decent furniture, better housing, better food, improvement of supply chain);

► Charming the people who have the money & power so there's at least the hope/promise of a consistent infrastructure improvement rather than just 'okay we'll deign to bequeath the "lower class citizens" with some money for a nice dinner roast and that's it and things never get better;

► (less plotty, more just pure fun/joy?) - A bunch of the group pools together whatever money they have & can reasonably spare and gets some random gifts from Eidris and Minaras and organize maybe a fun gift-giving/scavenger hunt/other game TBD for the kids? While ideally the Doctor would want to permanently improve conditions, he's also big on "be happy now while you can" so whatever joy they can find feels like a worthy cause.

[groundrules]

Send help, too adorable.

[thedreamer]

Sorry in advance to Ma'am Mariol, any potential game and gift shenanigans will probably also involve as much sugar as is reasonably possible to obtain...

[blackscales]

Happy to have Wrathion make good on his offer to help via his connections.

[thedreamer]

Excellent and so very much appreciated, from the man who cannot fathom the idea of possibly leaving a place or anyone behind without doing what he can to make it better. I'm sometimes terrible at the logistics of this type of thing, but however it comes up or however you'd like to play it out, I'm totally open! He'd be grateful for all connections/intel, etc.

[blackscales]

It looks like you have a couple of Eidris folk around, so potentially Wrathion can help pull the card in Minaras of them being shown up by Eidris if they don't do something.

[thedreamer]

Ooooh good angle! That might end up being our most solid/best bet for an actual longer-term solution. I will sit down this week and work out the logistics of how this looks and how we can make some forward progress on this, and let you know.

[blackscales]

Sure thing! Let me know if you need any help!

[snowcleave]

Hi, so also in the background Fei has been bringing food to the orphans and trying to improve their situation! She had a conversation with Ma'am Mariol and asked if she'd be receptive to moving the children above, and after Mariol seemed receptive to raising the kids in actual sunlight (a thought that got Fei in the feels) she got it into her head that maybe getting them a better place to live might be an option.

Anyway she's reached out to Emilia since her cover story grants her a bit of influence and a lot of exposure to the money moves in Eidris, but Emilia (and the unwinding lbr) have pointed out that the above might not be safe for kids. They've still been working on raising money even if there's no solution (Emilia called in some favors for Dragon Bachelor so they could put the prize money towards it), and ooc we've been jokingly talking about staging some kind of Eastbound Aid benefit show to get more cash out of the rich folk topside.

But yes, since an actual long-term solution to help the kids continues to evade, maybe they should cross paths and put their heads together, and get some other like-minded folk into it.

[thedreamer]

Eastbound Aid benefit show is beautiful haha! How utterly perfect, and Fei is so good. ;___;

The Doctor is the liaison between Eidris and the Mouse House but beyond trying to "charm" some money out of the money people initially at the summit (total fail) and just going back to the Mouse House often to bring oranges for Ma'am Mariol and various sugary snacks and other provisions for the kids, I deeply regret I am so terrible, shy, and newbie-ish at the logistics behind actually doing more the way the Doctor would want.

I am totally into plotting/playing out or even handwaving anything, down to the simplistic maybe they run into each other sometime in the Mouse House or anything else really. Especially with many of the strides/progress Fei and Emilia have already made, the Doctor would easily be like 'oh well done, you, how else can I help' kind of thing and tag along or just insert himself wherever needed, if needed at all!

[snowcleave]

Please help is so needed, they're getting money to put towards something useful but really the most Fei's been able to accomplish is stealing food out of rich people's kitchens, getting her husband to cook it, and taking it to the kids because I too am a shy hermit. But yeah, if you wanna let them run into each other at Mouse House, I think there's so much room to figure out an actual solution to help the orphans.

[thedreamer]

/shy hermits unite! If you'd like, I'm happy to either have the Doctor tag into Fei's inbox with an action-y 'meeting in the Mouse House' thread, or if a log in the comm would be better, or anything else! With their powers for good combined...unstoppable!

[snowcleave]

I am absolutely down for that, Fei's 70% brawn, 30% brains, the Doctor's insight would be so very welcome.

[valeas]

Here to +1 Chel! Emilia has an in with parliamentary figures in Eidris should they need to make some big moves, and she recently tried to ensure Mariadora as the winner to use the prize money toward Fei's efforts. But coin will only do so much when the situation in Serthica is growing even more, ah, alarming! So they've got their work cut out for them, which is to say, I'm excited. c:

[thedreamer]

Ah yes this is great and I'm equally excited! I'm so bad at the logistics of 'getting started' but since so much good work has been done already and Emilia has great connections as well, it seems like something where at least a good chunk of the smaller details could be handwaved possibly and we can figure out a way to jump into something more action-y possibly. Like, maybe the three of them (and anyone else interested or already involved) meet up to further discuss or put some things into motion?

With everything that's happened recently, it's also like, beyond just needing to make sure their conditions are improved, the Doctor is equally worried about them being safe because things are getting ah, progressively not good.

[valeas]

Honestly, yeah. I think Emilia would agree that the only real way to make concrete changes is to get to the bottom of this whole life/death mystery at the heart of Serthica. Which is what they were already tasked to do by the Merchant, so really! They were going to have to do it regardless.

I'm definitely up for future meetings where in more things can Happen, any chance to get more CR with your Doctor. c:

[spoilers]

You know River will be onboard to help with this, though why charm when you can steal?? Because she thinks he's far too optimistic sometimes. But ultimately, she'll sigh and ask what the plan is.

[thedreamer]

As she should, because he's always right! :P

that one time travel idea

[somebadnews]

This has been in my back pocket to use where it fits with game plot, but since you asked! It's still very on the table. I wrote it out in detail here: time travel shenanigans featuring dragon disaster. In the current arc, said dragon would appear in the non-dragon side, so that's fun.

Very flexible for input, but that's the basic idea. For your interest gauge. :>

Re: that one time travel idea

[groundrules]

Oooooh, yessss. I think that one would be super good as a post-arc thing, since it's pretty big scale — but if you've got any ideas more linked to Serthica, happy to integrate!

[somebadnews]

Potentially, yes! I'm very for a big mess, it's the only way he'll learn. It's flexible to fit in as plot allows, so no rush on my end.

Just throwing it out there that I still have (only the best) intentions to make it happen. It's been quietly worked on in the background, so if anyone is interested in some longterm time travel plotting do feel free to hit me up. :>

[groundrules]

Yessss, good call!

[thedreamer]

I know this will probably partially depend on how their current thread shakes out ultimately, but... ~time travel~ yes. Sorry this is the most unhelpful reply but just offering to throw the Doctor into the mix if/when you get something going!

[somebadnews]

Yes, absolutely! Five has been actively working on this lately, especially since he just lost another brother. He's very aware he needs to get the math right this time, so there's definitely potential if the Doctor catches wind. Or if he just thinks he's comparing notes because of his bad track record, zero suspicious activity happening.

I've always wanted to get up to something with time travel that goes horribly wrong, but he'll see what he was going for there!