Plot Threads

[modsurge]

GEOSURGE PLOT THREADS Occasionally mods will be allowing a set number of characters to schedule an involved conversation with a mod regarding the discovery of something in game, as announced on the OOC community or on a mod log. Characters who have signed up for the option will be selected via RNG (with preference given to characters who have not yet had a thread like this), and the thread will be conducted on this page. You can see a sample thread in the comments below, but in essence, this thread is meant to mimic the conversation a tabletop player might have with their DM. The mod will establish the setting, and you may describe your character's actions and decisions. The mod will respond with reactions and any particular consequences, and the mod and player will move throughout the scenario together, until all questions are satisfied and all actions are taken. After this informational thread is complete, it's assumed that anything learned within is now common knowledge for the rest of the game. You're still welcome to thread out discussion or discovery of this ICly, but if you'd like to skip ahead to any fallout or follow-up action, that's also fine. As a note, these threads do not have to be limited to one character in the scene. For the ease of moving threads along quickly, we ask that one player take the reins in terms of writing out the actions of all characters involved in the scene. We have a channel reserved in the Discord channel limited to current thread participants to facilitate OOC discussion of who's doing what for this purpose.

NAVIGATION APPLICATIONS ARRIVAL DROP FAQ HIATUS MOD CONTACT PLOT THREADS RULES SETTING SUGGESTIONS TAKEN PLAYERS

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EXAMPLE THREAD

[modsurge]

Somewhere around midday, when passing through the center of the city square, Zaphod Beeblebrox will find the ground rumbles under his feet. It's not unlike the quake that brought him here. Before he can spring aside, a chasm opens under his feet. He falls into darkness -- but not far. About ten feet down he hits solid ground, and finds himself in some kind of large, dark area. Daylight shines in through the crack above, but not enough to illuminate his surroundings. What does he do?

[thebigzee]

He lands like a cat straight on his face(s), and about five minutes later he's back on his feet like nothing happened. Is there anything to hear in the immediate area?

[modsurge]

He hears a steady drip of water from somewhere in the darkness, but otherwise the only sounds come from the square he left above.

The signal

[modsurge]

The first day of their arrival in the walled city, the beacon light still burns brightly into the sky. It comes from somewhere within the Industrial district, which is a bit of a hike to get up into. The streets aren't guaranteed to be safe at this point, and the bladed creatures that made it through the walls seem to be drawn, if faintly and indirectly, toward the source of the light. It might take a bit of stealth to make it to the base of the light without a fight, but it's possible.

[bestaround]

9S will pick the stealth option where he can. Especially in areas with more of the monsters, he'll get as close as he's able to by hopping rooftops and using Pod's help where the gaps end up slightly longer. If there's a building close enough to the base of the light, he'll stop there before proceeding.

[modsurge]

The base of the light actually is a building — it's being shone through the roof of a dingy little three-storey affair. All of the doors and windows of the building are locked, and many are barricaded from the inside, although there is a large hole busted out of a second storey window. How would he attempt to enter?

[modsurge]

The weather is bleak and cold, as is rapidly becoming the norm here, and there’s very little sign of life among the uneven, rocky terrain and few, battered trees out past the city’s wall. But there’s not no sign of life. A set of tracks can eventually be found about a mile out from the wall, thin and delicate, sometimes missing entirely for stretches of ground before it picks up again several feet onward.

kickstarts this whee

[incinerates]

The three have a marching order: Aizawa on point, Alucard in the middle and Bakugo acting as rearguard.

Bakugo wants to follow the tracks, cautiously. He'll keep an eye out for signs of individual vs. pack movement in regards to the tracks.

[modsurge]

There is definitively only one set of tracks, which, after a while, circle back on themselves. It will eventually be clear that whatever this creature was, it seems to have been ascribing a large loop.

After about thirty minutes of following this particular trail, though, there’s a flicker of movement on top of a ridge nearby. It’s difficult to tell what it is at this distance, but there is a brief flash of light on metal.

[modsurge]

The mountainside is quiet, as the small group leaves the protection of the walls, with only the soft wail of the wind to accompany them along their eastward path. Their target lay ahead: that suspiciously small, dark, jagged bit of landscape that doesn’t quite fit with the rest.

Strangely metallic brush is an increasingly common sight away from the wall. It sprouts from the ground in clusters and banks, looking very much as organic brush would have — but rendered in hard, sharp lines that glitter coldly in the light of day, with a warped look that announces its clear distinction from the base, living design. The plantlife of the mountainside is still majority organic, but those few metallic patches stand out in stark, alien contrast where they can be found.

Watchful eyes will also pick up small, frail-looking metallic figures toward the edges of sight. They limp a painful progress as they go, buzzing their feeble wings pathetically. There are three in all, all of them spaced far apart from one another, none ever seeming to draw close to another; if watched for long enough, they seem to describe large, consistently looping routes across the mountainside.

The target ahead, though it dips sometimes out of sight of the party on the ground behind ridges, doesn’t move.

[thephix]

They're going to keep heading towards their destination, keeping a watchful eye on the bugs but not going after them.

[modsurge]

The bugs don’t initially deviate much from their limping and crawling along, but as the group passes them, they do seem to slow, and pause more frequently. There are no other changes in their behavior for the moment.

About two hours into their journey, the black shape resolves itself a little more clearly: it’s a fragment of something larger, in some inorganic material. With just ten minutes left of walking, they crest a hill that brings the rest of that something larger into sight: a crashed ship.

It’s small, and seems to have been a compact but comfortable enough living quarters style ship for one. It’s also in complete ruin. The piece they’d seen previously was a shattered chunk of its outer hull, and similar pieces dot the landscape in a trailing pattern onward for the next mile or so leading up to the battered body of the ship itself. It looks stripped, with large and obvious missing elements, and the only remains are constructed of that same black material — it looks to be some kind of plastic. The hull is intact enough that the interior can’t be seen from the outside, although all of the visible damage promises it will never be spaceworthy again.

Exploration

[modsurge]

Things are looking quite good on the first few days of entrance into the city's back cavern — the lights and warmth are comforting, the fountains are lovely, and a bit of music plays here and there. It could almost feel like a real, living city, if not for the continued lack of any life in it.

Exploring toward the back of the cavern, though, Crymaria will stumble upon an area more practical and less gaudy, seemingly designated for freight transportation. There's a very large empty doorway set into the wall, opening into an empty shaft that tunnels smoothly straight up into the wall behind the city. Daylight can be seen faintly shining down from above. This might once have been an elevator shaft, but the metal constructing it is long gone.

To the right of the setup is the base of a large stone staircase, which ascends into shadow.

[auftauen]

We love ominous staircases, but before we start peering into the darkness, is there anything left behind in this transport area? Any leftover cargo, units for transporting cargo? Or just a big empty space?

[modsurge]

There is a pretty typical array here — storage bins, wheeled carts, something that may once have been a forklift, computer banks. Anything metal is gone, but few things were entirely metal, so the original use and design can still be made out. If dug through, the cargo is fairly varied — clothing, building materials, lumber (mostly gone), mostly empty boxes that must have contained metals, food (all rotted, much of it gone), cement, coal, etc.

The Mines

[modsurge]

The earthquakes have been gently shaking the city for nearly a week now, infrequent and subtle. They could be entirely missed, if one distracts themselves well enough with the glitz and the glam of the city uncovered. But nonetheless, they probably ought to be investigated ... just to make sure it’s nothing too bad, of course.

Eventually exploration for the source leads to the back walls of the lush cavern, where things begin to shift away from the luxury and glamour of the rest of the interior and into something more utilitarian. People earned livings back here once, toward the interior of the mountain. Machinery stands still and unused, metal parts stripped away, but investigation will identify most of it as mining equipment. Perhaps this was expansion efforts, perhaps mineral and metal gathering — with the workers long gone, it isn’t likely to be explained.

Although the exterior equipment and bureaucratic offices are still intact, entrances into the mines themselves aren’t so easy to locate. Some of the back walls are giant piles of rock, looser than the more typical hard-packed cavern walls — the result of a cave-in, it seems. The controlled nature and containment of the fall of the rocks suggests it was intentional.

One entrance is visible. A large, dark, stone door looks as if it was a recent addition to the area, installed after the rest of the infrastructure that surrounds it. It stands eight feet tall and twelve feet wide, about the shape one might expect a mine’s entrance to be, and an engraved plaque adorns the center of it, bearing the language of the city. The rest of the door is smooth and featureless ... but if one were inclined to venture into the mines, it would seem to be the only option.

[sketchery]

ok team tactless (tm) is all collectively pushing the giant stone door to see if it'll budge!! jester and trevor probably go straight for it, julian gets asked by trevor, shuzo is unhappy trevor didn't ask him so jester will ask very very nicely, thank you.

[modsurge]

The door very unequivocally does not budge. It’s like pushing on solid stone.

In the lower levels of the caverns, outdoors, somewhere where the goop has just begun to invade...

[plas]

Team Fleshless is going to start their little fact-finding expedition pretty simply. Here's how it's gonna go down:

Step 1: They stand at a safe distance from a patch of goop. Maybe 15-20 feet away.
Step 2: Plas grows an extra arm from somewhere in the vicinity of his right ribcage. It's the shittiest arm imaginable. It's probably more like a tentacle. Okay, it's a tentacle.
Step 3: Plas makes sure to inform 9S that he's rendered this portion of his physical structure really easy to cut off with the slightest bit of pressure, and also, that since he doesn't bleed, he should feel free to whack it with the sword as soon as it looks like this thing is about to go sideways.
Step 4: Awkward silence. Insert any doubts about the wisdom of this plan here.
Step 5: With 9S ready to dismember, Plas extends his new tentacle towards the nearest pile of goop, and stops just maybe a few inches of touching it outright. JUST TO DOUBLE CHECK THIS ASSUMPTION FOR HIMSELF that, lacking things like organic matter or flesh, he should be uninteresting to said gooey hivemind whatever-it-is.

[modsurge]

As expected, the substance burbles gently as it slowly oozes from whatever crack has let it in, unresponsive to Plas's proximity.

[plas]

Well then. He's just gonna slap that tentacle right down in the goop. Really just touch it way more than necessary when he could have just put the tip in.

Deeper Caves

[modsurge]

Since the last visit into the mines, things have not been going well for the city. Earthquakes are a near regular occurence, and the black substance bubbles up from seemingly every crack and cranny around. But there is a discernable source to it: the earth trembles most violently towards the mines, where everything began. If there’s any hope of stopping the disturbances, it may just be there.

There are two known ways in: the main door, locked magically by Caleb, originally sealed in a fruitless attempt to block off the first instances of the contagion, who knows how many years ago. Last anyone knew, a twisted, misshapen creature lurked within, perhaps not far from this door. It will undoubtedly have a thick surges of ichor to deal with and maneuver around, but there may be enough room for safe passage deeper into the mountain.

The second way is the vents, used as an exit by the escaping previous party. They’re set in a wall toward the back of the caverns, about 10 feet up from the highest point of a plateau set into the cavern wall. The vent was closed behind them, but the way would still be passable. No one has charted any of this area of the mines save for the exact passage the previous group took; it could lead deeper, or it could lead nowhere at all. It’s likely to be safer in terms of monstrous presences and tides of black ichor, but it’s more of an unknown factor.

How does this group proceed?

[plas]

Our gang of heroes has decided to go in through the vents. Presumably nobody wants to have to tell Jester that they killed Marti thirty seconds into the adventure. Plas will assist in getting anyone down safely if they don't want to make the jump, and the other three have got it in the bag on the visibility front between Crymaria's glow, the reliable Pod, and Caleb's special DnD flashlight.

9S and Plas will be sure to mention that the goop does like light.

The Prison

[modsurge]

Rin and Shuzo find themselves winding deeper and deeper through the cells, into into wider rooms that may have served as recreation and leisure for whoever it was that was kept down here. Eventually comes the gentle sound of running water, and it’s within one of these rooms that the source of the water is found: a leak has created an underground lake out of what must once have been an exercise room, and a series of odd structures line the far wall, half submerged in water. They don’t look native to room, cobbled together with mismatched reconstituted metal, and built into the corner almost organically — as a spider would fasten an eggsac.

The lighting down here is nonexistent, they have only whatever they’ve brought with them or might be able to make. The only sound is a steady, echoing drip, a quiet, sluggish burble of flowing water, and a very low hum that seems to emanate from the side of the room that houses the structures.

[imperceptus]

Rin is fairly sure that they have arrived in some kind of LAIR. He's pretending like he's got no idea about the precise features of the room, though he will somewhat strategically begin feeling around for some kind of exit with one hand. He'll be trying to hold on to Shuzo with his other hand. Buddy system!

(Specifically, he'll be heading for the hum.)