Time after time...

[lucetimods]

Howdy, paaaartners. Come gather 'round the chuck wagon 'cause it's time for another mod post.

So you’re back a few hundred years in the past. That’s mighty neat. But now I reckon you’re wondering what else there is to do, and how much your character can affect the future. Here are some examples, so take a real good look:

• Head to the tunnels and leave a message for the future! AKA troll the hell out of future generations
  
• Leave a tree in the middle of someone's future house!
  
• Build something to leave to your great-great-great-greeeat grand-self (or, you know, for the rest of the village too)
  
• Finish off the community buildings and houses, or build village shops and landmarks
  
• Put a dead pig in the foundation of someone’s house when it’s getting poured, so the house will always smell bad.
  
• Leave children behind and be terrible parents
  
• Salt the earth so that nothing can live!! Or plant new orchards and farms that will be plentiful by the time you get back, if you have to be nice about it
  
• Tinker with current technology to make way for more advanced technology in the future
  
• Go crazy, find your own things to do, be amazing! Just don't eat the bugs - or do and see what happens you monster
  

However, whatever you decide to do, please get mod approval down below before you do anything too drastic. This will help us track what's happening and give you an idea of how far you can go.

Some of you have had questions about the past townspeople (AKA the random background NPCS), so to give you an idea of what they’re like and what the “climate” of the town is, Here are some snippets of conversation your character may be hearing around town:

• “The town is looking livelier these days...we haven’t had this many people around since before, well, you know…”
  
  
• “At least when I showed up, I didn’t bring a whole church basement potluck’s worth of people with me! Back then, you were on your own until someone came along and found you!”
  
  
• “The red guy has been pretty quiet for a while now. I mean, especially quiet. Advanced quiet. He still creeps me out a little…”
  
  
• “Maybe if we ended up with so many here, it means there were less for the other guys to get a hold of...right?”
  
  
• “I don’t know, Tyr doesn’t seem to mind having them around, and what’s good enough for Tyr is good enough for me.”
  
  
• “I don’t know why we don’t just get somebody to Shift the new building into existence… I guess some people just like doing things the old-fashioned way.”
  
  
• “Wonder if any of the other towns got hit as hard with newcomers, or if it’s just us that get all the luck.”
  
  
• “Haven’t heard much from those raving lunatics lately...makes me nervous, you know? Yeah, yeah, I shouldn’t call ‘em that because it’s ‘insensitive’ or whatever, but my mama taught me to never tell a lie.”
  

Now, what if your character feels too claustrophobic in the village and wants to see the outside world like never before?! Well, they can do that too! SOON, characters are going to have the opportunity to go out and explore the outside world! They may come across very familiar landmarks they've seen before on missions and drafts--albeit different-looking due to the difference in time--and maybe even some new places too. Let us know if you are interested in having your character explore a particular area, and we can provide details for what they might see. Gather a merry band of men (and women!) together to make the journey! There is no power cap outside of the barrier, so you can’t be tamed!

Be warned that if your character does decide to go out and explore, they may miss out on some of the goings-ons in the village itself. World exploration is a time-consuming affair, after all! But with your efforts… Who knows, maybe you'll be able to map out the world itself. Provided you have a cartographer, of course. ;) So please keep that in mind if you decide to send your character out on an extended exploration trip.

Of course, there's plenty more to come during this all this timey wimey business. We've got something big coming up that was hinted at in John's post, and more details will be forthcoming soon. Of course, as always, any questions should be directed down below.

Comments

[saltprince]

Rofl okay bear with me this post had me assuming that questions are the vogue (a sort of do it your selfer thing?) so I've actually got a number here.

1) "Be warned that if your character does decide to go out and explore, they may miss out on some of the goings-ons in the village itself." - Okay so if you want to keep that close to the chest (or it's just unknown) that totally makes sense to me, but if you could give even a skeletal timetable of the big-big plot stuff and when you expect those might happen (like just the liasons with the General) that might be nice for plotting purposes

2) Given that they do have allies in other villages (presumably other enclosures) are there means of transportation outside the barrier which they have set up (IE: flying machines, trains, teleporter pads powered by Shifting, etc) to allow for better contact between them? Or would any exploring be on out own power?

3) Actually on that note given that it is a whole world and someone might want to go to somewhere not necessarily close to Luceti, could I push you guys for a rough map of what'll be Region 6 in the future, or at least the area directly around this village? If not, what if characters asked around here if people in this village could give them any maps, either of the area around this village, the area around other villages, or any other maps they could give them?

4) “The town is looking livelier these days...we haven’t had this many people around since before, well, you know…” -- What if our characters were to hear something like that and followup ask what they are talking about. The mood I've gotten from the NPCs is that they're generally more helpful and open than a lot of other ones we've worked with so I figure it's worth a shot.

5) Actually on that note Masaomi at least would be asking around to see if anyone in the village's met or heard of some of the NPCs we know from the future who stand any chance of being this old, both my name and physical/personality description (some of them are longshots admittedly, but most of these we know have lived at least two lifetimes, and some of them like Bil, Zompano, and Gzork presumably many more). So if there's anything to be heard about the following that'd be great: Zompano, Bil, Hoi Hideken, Kovan Foster, Gzork, Alice, CJ, and the Commandant (note that with the last one he wouldn't be asking about her by that name, more her description, because obviously that title wouldn't exist now)

6) Okay so this one's actually a little selfish because Masaomi wouldn't really ask about him but in the event other people would/my own curiosity, same as all the ones in #5, is there anything to be heard about Jacob by name or description? (this one I'm seeing as a lot more of a longshot but I couldn't help myself)

7) The tunnels only seem to be connected through the school given there's no access on the map. Do we have free (or ask permission from Romeaus/Tyr I guess) access to them circa John's new post? If so I've probably got some follow up questions given the suggestion to write things there.

8) On John's post there is a mention of the main meeting there. Are there any particularly noteworthy points which would come up from the NPC villagers and/or Tyr at that main meeting in particular? Or are we going to get some sort of follow up comment about it? I confess it got me curious.

I know there's a number here (and I might have some follow ups) but I'm getting in the spirit of trying to figure out what I'm doing from here and I hope it'll help some other people too! So thanks in advance for the answers.

[lucetimods]

Sorry for taking a few days on this, your novel required a novel reply |D; (and discussion of a group sort)

1, 2, & 3) Rough timeline would have specific goings-on in town starting on the 1st of November and onwards, giving people a good week or so ICly wander around the area. (We will have more details on Sunday/Monday for that as well as the mission itself.) With fliers and magic users available and the potential for Leon's teleport machines to be set up for the use of this plot, people should be able to get back in a hurry if it's plotted out right. (Speaking for myself, Billy is a teleporter who can zap people willy-nilly with no power cap, and I know he's not the only one. There's options to return to town.)

For transportation itself, there will be a lot of slow travel required, unfortunately, because the priority is given to the mission itself. However, it turns out that the Filial rebellion has a secret stash of ATVs due to the lack of widespred teleportation technology, so people are free to make use of that. There's still an awful lot of forest between you and anything interesting, but at the very least people can get a feel for how big the world is. A couple of ocean harbours exist as well, big enough to carry groups across the water, though you may want to coordinate.

A map for the surrounding area will be provided in the next info dump, as well as descriptions of what exists in each direction. Characters who can travel quickly over large distances should probably give us an idea of how fast they can fly and how far they'd go from town so we know what kind of terrain they'd see en route. Most of the residents are exactly that, just residents, so they wouldn't really be any more helpful with providing a map as your typical player character would be.

4) If questioned about such comments, NPCs would clarify with some discomfort that they used to have a good working relationship with a certain group of residents of the world, and that back then the barriers weren't necessary. Details are sketchy; seems like it isn't something they like to talk about, and their tone of voice would imply that it involved losses of some kind. For the record, NPCs who know of this would be long-term residents of the world.

5 & 6) None of those names would be recognized by the residents or any NPCs aside from Romaeus. (This includes Jacob.) Actually, a couple of the names are common enough that NPCs might know of someone, but it won't be the ones you're thinking of. At this time there is no one using the rank of commandant in Luceti.

7) Access to the tunnels inside the town hall is available to characters... within reason. If people wander in there and start messing around with the scientists trying to get work done and blow something up they'd get their butts escorted out, but some rooms will be open for poking around and the hallway is certainly accessible, including The Wall (you know what I mean). If you've got more questions, fire away.

8) The main meeting will have it's own NPC post explaining everything in full detail; this will be posted (as mentioned in #1) on Sunday/Monday. We super-apologize for the lag on this one; my hiatus and a really clumsy miscommunication on my part led to some confusion on what was happening and who was doing what, so we are hashing out the nitpicky details before everything goes live. Please bear with us for a couple more days!

[saltprince]

Man I don't blame you, I knew I was being a bit indulgent. I'll be counting on the post for most of that, but some follow ups on the tunnel: If we have Access to The Wall, what about the technology that surrounded it? Is any of that operable at this time, or is all of that already defunct? Also, do we have access to the elevator there to go down further to the locked rooms or those deep tunnels were Twila was? not that we necessarily would, just to check

Oh and I guess as a side-bar: if Twila's already dead Zompano has to be in this world somehow based on some stuff we already knew, so what if he was described? Anyone seen someone who looks like that? I just noticed Pi asked that below, rofl. Nevermind.

( and by someone you mean they know the names but if you asked more they would be describing other people? Just to make sure I'm on the same page )

Oh! And if you were to ask the villagers who their allies/the other towns are, would you get the names of any other villages or bases specifically? If so, what might some of them be?

[lucetimods]

The technology and such doesn't really exist right now- this is extremely early Luceti, and while the tunnels have been carved out, they're still being filled in with labs, research material, and scientists working on developing more Shifting technology.

Access to the area where Twila was held is strictly forbidden.

Villages/bases in this era don't have names yet! Not even Luceti has been named; currently they go by regions. There is one exception, which will be explained in a modpost shortly.

[saltprince]

Are there any traits attributed to the different regions if you talked it out with someone? ... Unless that'll be answered somewhere else?

[lucetimods]

Hopefully today's mod post clarified this one!

[generalflirt]

More or less to be to be sure they could be like "oh yeah there's a port off to our west, some enclosure to the south, one up to the north, the nomads on another continent, then the uncarted places across the sea" or would it be even more vague?

(or could be be more specific like "the people in the enclosure to the south tend to be jerks but the ones to the north are legit")

[lucetimods]

Some NPCs would be more helpful than others but characters can get more precise directions for the close continents. They can point in a direction and tell you what's useful and roughly how far away it might be. Everything beyond #1 and 5 are probably not going to be very specific, though, leaving the exploration to you guys.