Ugh, don't you hate tourists?

[lucetimods]

Hey everyone, time to get some event stuff going on. Before that, one quick announcement. So this last mission I outsourced a bit of help in coming up with the mission as well as getting it moving. Even writing up parts of it! This help has been from Aly, who plays Buffy Summers and Richard Sharpe. In light of that, she's now agreed to come on board the mod team to help out with all sorts of things.

So everyone give a welcome to Aly! Look, look. She has a mod icon too. Isn't that cool?

Oh yeah, also the weather calendar has been moved here. This also includes missions and events already announced, as well as player plots that you’ve previously arranged with the mods. Many of you have probably already seen this, but if not: here it is!

Okay, moving on ahead. Time for an event. This is going to be a little different than what we've done in the past. So here we go. Let's start with some background.

One thing that has become more and more obvious as the layers of the world are unraveled is that Luceti is not alone out there. Not only is there a big world out there, but other enclosures like this one also exist out there. Already one of these enclosures was visited on a previous mission, in a place called Segretar. On the last draft, volunteers from all different enclosures joined in the battle as well. It's a struggle out there and Luceti isn't the only one fighting! Or the only one under risk of attack.

Another enclosure, known as Kin’cora, has been attacked by the cultists. Their barrier was disrupted and much of the population was either captured for sacrifice or outright killed. The Malnosso launched a counterattack, but they were only able to save a little over half of the population. But with the enclosure utterly wrecked, the survivors need to be put somewhere before they can be properly dispensed to other locations. As it turns out, Luceti is the enclosure closest to them. So for a week, Luceti will be playing host to a group of refugees. A lot of refugees. Just over three hundred of them, in fact.

So what does this mean? Things are going to get crowded. Currently there are over 500 empty rooms in the remaining houses and apartments not yet occupied (that’s nine houses and 171 apartments). But like people in Luceti, these people aren't exactly going to want to just live with ANYONE. So all of these empty places will fill up rapidly. Some of these people may be left without places to stay on top of it. However, things don't end there. Because the cultists are on a major offensive, Luceti will be having its own difficulties on top of it. These include:

A drought. This past month has already been a hot one with little rain. By now Luceti is pretty dry. Some areas may even be in danger of wild fire.

Limited food supplies. Once the current supply of food in the grocery is used up, everyone in Luceti will have to make do with basic rations. Just enough to keep people fed, but only if people don't take more than their fair share. They aren't completely out of luck, though. Some crops on the farm may be ready for harvest. There's fish in the lakes and game in the woods. We won't starve, but making do will be tough.

Intermittent power. The Shifts keeping the water running, the electricity going, and the buildings repairing? Well they may not consistently work the entire time. Most of the time will be a brownout, with a decrease in the power output of electricity, with infrequent blackouts at other times. The water will be running, but it's being overtaxed and may sometimes come out as a slow drip. The buildings will still self-repair, but it may take several days for just a simple hole in the wall to seal itself up.

Normally there are trashbins that you can dump your stuff in. The stuff will eventually vanish as the Malnosso use a Shift to collect it. Well, that won't be happening during this week. So junk will start piling up pretty quickly.

Other stores that usually get in new supplies via the Malnosso will be cut off for the week. That means no new stuff in the general store, no new clothes, no new materials or weapons in the smithy, and so on.

Citing safety concerns, the Malnosso have raised the power cap inside of Luceti, cranking it up to 90% power dampening. While people will still be able to use or possess special powers, it will be in a much more diminished fashion than the normal 50%. How exactly this affects your character is at player discretion, but it should not be enough to be debilitating for anyone. Unless, of course, you really want it to be.

So how do we handle the NPCs? Well, first off, they will not be played by us mods. All interactions can be handwaved. However, you can have NPCs in your threads. It just means you have to play them out as an additional person in your threads. This does not mean making accounts for them! Feel free to get creative, give them names, or link a picture of what they might look like. While they don’t need to be deep characters, it’s okay to give them a little personality and assign a world that they’re from. Small touches. You can control this NPC in interactions with your character or allow other people to take control of them too.

Here’s an idea of what these NPCs are like:

These villagers are from a place called Kin’cora. For those of you who are Luceti veterans, this village is much like what Luceti was when the game first started. Imagine current Luceti, now take away the electricity. Only four community buildings, each one five stories high. No battle dome, none of the custom built buildings, and only the most basic of shops. Their barrier is much smaller, encompassing an area of the forest and not expanding to where the mountains would lie. For a place that used to house five hundred people, it wasn’t too spacious.

Their enclosure is only nine months old and thus most of the population has been in this world for less than six months. They have been subjected to some brutal Malnosso experiments. Their only interactions with the Malnosso have been through the gleeful gloating of Count Zompano. They have had no previous drafts or missions, leaving them utterly ignorant of the outside world. Aside from the soldiers that rescued them, the people of Luceti will be their first time interacting with anybody with knowledge of what the world is like.

Due to their situation, these villagers are highly suspicious and a touch paranoid. While to some extent they will be grateful for help provided by Lucetians, many of them will suspect them of being in league with the Malnosso. Even if the situation is explained, they’ll inevitably be envious and resentful of the better treatment and enclosure afforded to Luceti.

There will be a large assortment of people in this village. Men, women, and children. Most of them unrelated to each other and not quite as bonded as they could be. Many of them are fighters, some of them being skilled enough to match people in Luceti in both ability and powers. In light of the situation, some of them may become violent or form gangs. There may be instances of food hoarding, theft, and outright fighting amongst themselves and against Lucetians.

As before with other NPCs, these people may come from the same worlds as people in Luceti. None of them will be appable characters. Most of them will be complete strangers to everyone, even though there is the possibility that one of them may be someone from Earth who is a big fan of Captain America. However, if you like, there can be NPCs your characters may know. Just not people they would have a close relationship to. Examples of this might be one of Ling Yao’s clansmen, one of Haruhi Suzumiya’s former classmates, a vampire mook that Buffy Summers previously dusted, or a marine who sailed with Horatio Hornblower. These are completely made up characters and aren’t meant to be fleshed out. But they do give the situation a ‘close to home’ vibe.

We’ll provide some snippets of NPC dialog later for those who don’t want to really bother interacting with them, but want to get an idea of what they’re like.

One note about this event is that we want player participation. This is a good opportunity to come up with player plots to work within the event itself. We’ve never had NPCs like this in the game and there’s a chance we never will again, so feel free to be creative. Maybe your character can start a temporary orphanage for the parentless children, maybe the Blue Rogues need to be on patrol to break up fights, setting up more space for the injured to be tended to, an attempt at harvesting food at the farm, or there could be an attempt to bring down a ringleader of a gang who is trying to get more than their fair share of the supplies.

So here’s a timeline of events:

23rd - This is the last day for supplies to arrive in the stores. (This includes the vending machines in the Dome).
25th - An announcement will be made about incoming refugees and the change in power dampening. They will arrive six hours later from the south.
27th - The village will start experiencing power fluctuations (electricity, water, self-repairs). The Battle Dome’s scenario chambers will power down for the remainder of the event.
31st - After a hard week, the villagers will be escorted to the tunnel teleporter to be placed in other enclosures. Those who resist will be collected by standard droids.

Feel free to ask questions in the mod comment below. The rest of the post can be used for plotting, which we strongly encourage you to do!