JULY STATE OF THE GAME

[metamods]

STATE OF THE GAME

THIS MONTH

01 July 2023
⚔︎ STATE OF THE GAME
⚔︎ CONFLUENCE/DOWNBURST II

17 July 2023
⚔︎ DOWNBURST III OOC PLOTTING

19 July 2023
⚔︎ DOWNBURST III

20 July 2023
⚔︎ ACTIVITY CHECK-IN BEGINS

25 July 2023
⚔︎ ACTIVITY CHECK-IN ENDS

⚔︎ LITTLE LOVE - Little Love has been. . quiet, over the last month. With the changes going on in Excelsior and the shift in power in Central City, it's no wonder that Little Love has been trying to stay out of the mess. Some locals have been working on building small shelters on their farmland, passing through whispers that their doors are open to those who need safe housing. Their world is meant to be shared, after all. Separating people by whether or not they were born on their planet goes against everything Little Love believes in, and if they can offer safe haven for people who need it, there are several old cranky farmers who will open up barn doors - no questions asked.

⚔︎ CENTRAL CITY - Central City's borders are still "closed", but only when it suits Mechanima himself. Alliance heroes will find it difficult to get in past it's borders, being stopped by Red Hood's crew in some areas and other Society villains at others. Unaligned Starfallen will have no difficulty passing borders, nor will Society ones. While Mechanima is avoiding directly interfering with Arcadia business, people may notice that, while some of the Arcadian guards had been within Central City when the city takeover had been announced, there's been less of them visibly wandering the streets - and several Society villains messing with whatever ones manage to sneak their way in. This is their turf, not Arcadia's.

⚔︎ SUNSET FALLS - With Loki's absence, things in Sunset Falls have started getting tense. It feels like the air is working hard to strangle the life out of it's residents; the local were-teens are getting rowdier than usual, antsier, and have begun causing issues on the edge of town: breaking into shops, leaving a lot of colorful graffiti over unguarded buildings, throwing parties in old abandoned buildings and not cleaning up after themselves when they're done - which is leaving others in town feeling more agitated, too. Witches are getting angry that their sacred grounds are getting stamped all over, they're laying curses for the next poor group to step up, those curses are causing kids to get sick or vomit up frogs, which is angering parents, which is causing work places to get even more tense. Something foul is in the air, and it's making everything worse.

⚔︎ EXCELSIOR - Once again, plants have overtaken Excelsior. Heroes currently stationed in Arcadia are asked to come help eradicate them while officials search for the source of the return. There are. . . new buildings being constructed on the edges of Excelsior where it meets Arcadia, tall skycrapers being built up by friendly looking drones. Their purpose isn't quite clear, but given how swiftly Excelsior is working to get them put up, they must be for something, right?

HOUSEKEEPING

Hello, Heroes!

⚔︎ We've updated the NPC engagement page to reflect some of the changes with the current roster: namely, Fantastic's takeover of the Alliance

⚔︎ The FAQ has been updated with the following: the Battlements of the Shining Gods info blurb has been updated, added return home trips, clarified where to go to interact with NPCs, and cleared up some of the information surrounding OurPowers. We'll be working on updating this through August, too! Please let us know if there are any changes you think could be useful for our FAQ.

⚔︎ We're updating the Activity Check system for new characters: specifically, we'll be requiring that new characters respond to their first month's AC check with links to their taken list and guild page comments.

⚔︎ While we've been working to be more on top of Engagement posts lately, we've also realized managing to keep up with event engagements on top of non-event engagements can be a little extra taxing! To counteract this: we're going to be putting non-event engagements on hold during very involved events, to ensure we're able to help players interact with the event. Once events have completed, we'll return to answering plot engagements submitted by Thursday on Fridays.

The CALENDAR reflects our current schedule accurately up through September, including estimated shifted dates.

⚔︎ This game has an unofficial DISCORD SERVER! As a reminder, the moderators will not be monitoring the server's contents. However, players who have issues in the server are still welcome to bring their concerns to us at MOD CONTACT, just as they would with Plurk.

DROPS

The following characters will vanish in the coming Confluence:

Thad Thawne II, Ken Kaneki, Darth Nox, Alina Starkov, Aleksander Kirigan, Peter Parker, Lila, Kell Maresh

Please coordinate with the mods if you would like to claim some or all of their belongings.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU —

Welcome, new heroes! Please use the form below to introduce yourself and start plotting if you'd like:

<B>Player Name & Pronouns:</b> <B>Preferred Communication:</b> Plurk, Discord, DM, etc. <B>Character Name & Journal:</b> <B>Guild Affiliation:</b> Is your character susceptible to being swayed into membership? Or will they take the hard path and stay unaffiliated? <B>Character Motivations & IC/OOC Goals:</b> What does your character want? You can list short term and long term goals, but also emotional needs that aren't being fulfilled. What do you want to do with them in game? What ideas do you already have? <B>Plot/CR Hooks:</b> What kinds of things does your character get up to that might throw them in the path of someone else's plot, or that you would like other players to engage with? What role does your character play in their canon plot? What role might they play in others' plots, and what would it take to get their attention? Are they an antagonist, a researcher, a tech whiz?

Comments

tony stark | marvel comics

[voicelog]

Character Name & Journal: tony stark (aka T) voicelog
Guild Affiliation: unaligned

Relevant Links: info | permissions | inbox

Character Motivations & IC/OOC Goals: T admittedly has been in a far too peaceful lull these past few months. all he's been doing is getting his apartment building renovated and playing stocks in new york. has he been keeping up with the news? yes. has he decided whether he wants to get involved in it? no. i'm hoping to throw a wrench into his little self-induced staycation, so he might get involuntarily dragged into some Cult Business™. also it's really about time he starts to face at least some of his demons because he's been conveniently ignoring them for like a year now and that's just not conducive to anything.
Plot/CR Hooks: he's mostly around new york tbh. T hasn't bothered visiting any of the other major cities in a while, but with arcadia becoming more and more of a prevalent thing, he might eventually fly out there to check it out. otherwise, he does have his morning routine in nyc. daily jog, donut shop visit, etc. he has deactivated his online accounts though, so it's a little hard to reach him. contact stephen rehandle if you want to get a hold of him. atm he's using a stealth account because that's how he rolls. he might be reactivating some accounts again in the near future though. dude just takes self-isolating too far sometimes.

[chewiedout]

If Tony ever comes out of hiding Carol would love to get to check on him because well, you're supposed to do that for your sponsor if you find out he's also trapped in another world with you.

[voicelog]

oh he'll be coming out real soon, whether he likes it or not

what's carol gonna be up to? it might be likelier for him to find her than the other way around

[chewiedout]

awe poor tony.

she's gonna be super trying to overcompensate by trying to help people, but also figure out wtf is going on. and generally probably pretty loud about how we can't preemptively try to stop shit from happening because that goes horribly wrong :(

i'd imagine she's probably pretty loud and flashy because carol. probably desperately try to make some friends/allies because she's pretty dependent on people anymore. her general avoidance of alcohol happens in the order of 1. fight enemies, 2. be with friends, 3. go to space and hang out, so at the moment it's going to be a lot of 1 + trying to find new people for 2 since 3 is off the table.

[voicelog]

yeah tony's typical go to methods have been pretty limited too so he gets it. at this point, he's really just relying on superheroing and working on projects, but the latter is depleting by the day.

he can always run into carol either in excelsior or during the upcoming event, depending on how quickly you want their reunion to happen. could possibly clock her on the network too, depending on how active she'll be on there.

[chewiedout]

perhaps she just needs to be like "anyone know where a girl can find an AA meeting around here" lmfao.

[voicelog]

lmf that's an excellent question bc ngl this guy hasn't been to one in almost a year

[chewiedout]

I am tempted now, and can imagine Carol being like "what do you mean you haven't had a meeting in a year Tony???" and becoming highly concerned.

[voicelog]

look,,,, he's been busy. a lot has happened to him. it just hasn't crossed his mind. 🙃 which is bad. but also, it's probably fine.

if he clocks her on the network, he'll def reach out, as long as he's aware that it is her. he's currently in a non-participatory relationship with social media, partly because he really does hate social media lmf but he's still tracking everything like 24/7

[chewiedout]

Yeah I feel Carol is very much not a social media person who will now unfortunately have to give it a go to try to get info because what is being new and knowing no one. I love the idea of Tony monitoring without actually participating? Does he have keyword scans coming up? Searching for people? I'm fascinated.

That said, even though it looks like, pre-Tony's cannon point for some of it. Carol basically lives with daily guilt of 'oh shit I owe tony for lots of shit, like getting me sober, and helping me through my shitty dad trauma and my mom trauma, and all my family trauma (and yes that whole event we don't talk about too)" so feel free to use that as a tool in any sort of plot sense that you might want, it'd be super obvious to Tony if they meet.

[voicelog]

yeah he has tapped into both the satellite systems and the existing networks via extremis, so he keeps a scan going on them 24/7 and has set it up so that he'll get alerted to a multitude of specific things, including known names/aliases etc.

at tony's current canonpoint, he has had most of his memories wiped from like everything post-extremis/civil war to partway through the dark reign, but anything before those events will be there.

i'm happy to have them icly revisit all of it though, since i probably need a refresher too and she's always welcome to talk it out with him

[chewiedout]

That's very cool and very Tony I love it.

I think Tony and Carols big moments are the Buseik runs in Avengers / Iron man and then get forgotten for a while anyways. (I should read the Fraction run though! It's on the list I'm just not super solo Tony familiar, but I know everyone raves about the Faction run)

But them coming back together and icly visiting stuff would be great because I love their weird sibling-esque dynamic from carols side anyways, and exploring / having to discover what is or isn't there due to both tony's cannon + meme loss would be fun! Also, she pretty much knows that she owes tony literally anything he could ever need. (and will somehow be trying to do that without explaining the guilt because, guilt)

I'll throw something up on the network from her if you want so he can reach out?

[voicelog]

the faction run is my everything and no run since has been able to meet its standards. the only thing i personally digress about it is that the art isn't my favorite because they drew him like he's in his 50s when this is supposed to be a 35 young old man. but pls read it!!! lmk what you think :')

but also if it isn't too much trouble, you should point me in the right direction for tony/carol moments in the buseik run. i'd love to refresh my mem re: them since it's been a long long time since i've read any of the older comics and it'll be nice to reexplore it while we work out their in game cr.

and yes! he'll reach out to her if he sees her on the network so pls do 👀

[chewiedout]

Yes! One of my best friends is a huge comics Tony fan and frequently complains that he gets a lot of bad writers + somehow the good writers have bad art!

I will put together a compellation / figure it out after work and send it to you on plurk if that works?

I'm really excited for them to be coming from two very different cannon points it should make for some fun CR to develop!