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SETTING
The game's location is ordinary and familiar, planet Earth in the year 2014. The world's human history will be completely identical to the real world with the exception of game events and the existence of the city which acts as the early focal point of gameplay. As time progresses, the setting will expand to a completely global setting and characters will be allowed (and plot will encourage) them to go elsewhere. Nothing supernatural exists, although certainly lots of the unusual. It's a place which contains all the things that make up a world. Nature, mankind, peace, war, love, hate. But it has nothing special. It's just the same as the real 21st century Earth.
With just two differences. The first is that the planet itself is alive and sentient, a cosmic entity that guides the development of life on Earth very loosely by deciding which soul to place in which body. The second is that a mysterious entity that appears to be from another reality attempted to encroach on the planet in its ancient past. The sentient life force of the planet realised it was in danger and had no adequate form of defence. In response it used the breach the entity created to gather the 'souls' of dead beings from destroyed universes and implanted them into new born lifeforms. Now when dangerous breaches occur, these people are slowly reformatted to match their old lives in an attempt to act as the world's guardians, whenever they get involved in the unfolding conflict. However, their souls were not chosen for reincarnation by any method further than being from dimensions beyond; the people they might find themselves becoming may not be the most obvious choices for the Earth's protectors.
The characters won't know this for a long time. They will probably be more focused on keeping themselves alive, as the game will have a lot of dangerous events that will largely revolve around the previously mentioned entity attempting to take a foothold in this reality through a series of schemes. There will be no self resolving events. Players will have to be proactive in dealing with what is occurring.
The story begins in Locke City. It's a particularly massive city on the coast of New Jersey, USA, and contains everything you'd expect a city to contain: slums, business and industrial districts, suburbs, hotels, schools. The city has a very strong multicultural make-up, and features an equivalent to a 'Little Italy' or 'China Town' for every culture you can think of. The exact contents of the city and its surroundings are left to the players and the requirements of the plot. In other words, world building is a community effort. To add to the city's geography and to see the contributions of others, go to the City Development Page. For current weather, Ocean City, NJ can be used as a guide.
Whilst it has already been decided the game will undergo 'seasons' where when one ends the setting changes drastically, much of what will occur with the plot will be a response to the player's actions. Some things players will be asked to stick to (such as for at least the first 'season,' they will need to hide the truth from the public), but otherwise a lot of what happens will be reactions to what they do. The only NPCs will be normal humans and the enemy (and their minions) with no untouchable NPCs that are in control of the setting.
Something like a memory loss game and something like an AU game, the idea is that you do not play your character but their reincarnation from their canon in this game's setting. They will have lived their whole life there as an ordinary human being, with the player creating an AU history and personality. Players will be allowed a few major deviations (and lots of minor deviations) from the canon character's personality to make them logically fit into their AU life, but as they spend time in game they will have parts of their previous life returned to them as memories, personality traits, powers, appearance changes and be given items etc. that link them to their past selves. This process is called an Echo. For more detail on Echoes, see this page.
First season events will mostly be based giving clues to the mystery that the players are already privy to, the emergence of supernatural beings and the character's attempts to deal with them. Each time a character is involved in one of these events (which will be chaotically distributed instead of at regular intervals) they will receive an Echo.
A timeline of in-game events can be found here.
THE NETWORK
When a character receives their first Echo they become unable to forget a long string of numbers. This number is used to connect to an otherworldly communication network, which does not exist on the internet or in any physical form. Ordinary humans cannot perceive the the network at all. They will only be able to sense the original string of numbers.
Almost anything can be used to establish a connection, so long as the number can be applied to it. A piece of paper, phone, computer, reflective surface, etc. Be imaginative.
Using one's own number connects to the general network which is available for all to see. Using someone else's number sends the message directly to that person, but they still need to connect to the network themselves and therefore an ordinary phone would be better for emergencies. This also means accidental posts are nearly impossible.
As a note, due to the way "private" lines are established, posts can not be filtered to or away from a certain group; as soon as the original character puts in their own number and then that of another, it opens a line directly to that other character. If one wants to send a particular message to a number of people, it must be done one by one and the messages will not be visible to anyone else except the two the connection is between.
More information on IC- mechanics of network posts can be found here.
When posting, both the initial poster and repliers' tags are to be formatted as CANON: Character's Canon Name. Additionally, the tags for +location, for type of post (#action or #network), and if applicable the !open tag should be applied.
Please also specify how the post was made in the subject line, such as if it was from a phone, computer, written in blood on the floor, etc.
The game's location is ordinary and familiar, planet Earth in the year 2014. The world's human history will be completely identical to the real world with the exception of game events and the existence of the city which acts as the early focal point of gameplay. As time progresses, the setting will expand to a completely global setting and characters will be allowed (and plot will encourage) them to go elsewhere. Nothing supernatural exists, although certainly lots of the unusual. It's a place which contains all the things that make up a world. Nature, mankind, peace, war, love, hate. But it has nothing special. It's just the same as the real 21st century Earth.
With just two differences. The first is that the planet itself is alive and sentient, a cosmic entity that guides the development of life on Earth very loosely by deciding which soul to place in which body. The second is that a mysterious entity that appears to be from another reality attempted to encroach on the planet in its ancient past. The sentient life force of the planet realised it was in danger and had no adequate form of defence. In response it used the breach the entity created to gather the 'souls' of dead beings from destroyed universes and implanted them into new born lifeforms. Now when dangerous breaches occur, these people are slowly reformatted to match their old lives in an attempt to act as the world's guardians, whenever they get involved in the unfolding conflict. However, their souls were not chosen for reincarnation by any method further than being from dimensions beyond; the people they might find themselves becoming may not be the most obvious choices for the Earth's protectors.
The characters won't know this for a long time. They will probably be more focused on keeping themselves alive, as the game will have a lot of dangerous events that will largely revolve around the previously mentioned entity attempting to take a foothold in this reality through a series of schemes. There will be no self resolving events. Players will have to be proactive in dealing with what is occurring.
The story begins in Locke City. It's a particularly massive city on the coast of New Jersey, USA, and contains everything you'd expect a city to contain: slums, business and industrial districts, suburbs, hotels, schools. The city has a very strong multicultural make-up, and features an equivalent to a 'Little Italy' or 'China Town' for every culture you can think of. The exact contents of the city and its surroundings are left to the players and the requirements of the plot. In other words, world building is a community effort. To add to the city's geography and to see the contributions of others, go to the City Development Page. For current weather, Ocean City, NJ can be used as a guide.
Whilst it has already been decided the game will undergo 'seasons' where when one ends the setting changes drastically, much of what will occur with the plot will be a response to the player's actions. Some things players will be asked to stick to (such as for at least the first 'season,' they will need to hide the truth from the public), but otherwise a lot of what happens will be reactions to what they do. The only NPCs will be normal humans and the enemy (and their minions) with no untouchable NPCs that are in control of the setting.
Something like a memory loss game and something like an AU game, the idea is that you do not play your character but their reincarnation from their canon in this game's setting. They will have lived their whole life there as an ordinary human being, with the player creating an AU history and personality. Players will be allowed a few major deviations (and lots of minor deviations) from the canon character's personality to make them logically fit into their AU life, but as they spend time in game they will have parts of their previous life returned to them as memories, personality traits, powers, appearance changes and be given items etc. that link them to their past selves. This process is called an Echo. For more detail on Echoes, see this page.
First season events will mostly be based giving clues to the mystery that the players are already privy to, the emergence of supernatural beings and the character's attempts to deal with them. Each time a character is involved in one of these events (which will be chaotically distributed instead of at regular intervals) they will receive an Echo.
A timeline of in-game events can be found here.
THE NETWORK
When a character receives their first Echo they become unable to forget a long string of numbers. This number is used to connect to an otherworldly communication network, which does not exist on the internet or in any physical form. Ordinary humans cannot perceive the the network at all. They will only be able to sense the original string of numbers.
Almost anything can be used to establish a connection, so long as the number can be applied to it. A piece of paper, phone, computer, reflective surface, etc. Be imaginative.
Using one's own number connects to the general network which is available for all to see. Using someone else's number sends the message directly to that person, but they still need to connect to the network themselves and therefore an ordinary phone would be better for emergencies. This also means accidental posts are nearly impossible.
As a note, due to the way "private" lines are established, posts can not be filtered to or away from a certain group; as soon as the original character puts in their own number and then that of another, it opens a line directly to that other character. If one wants to send a particular message to a number of people, it must be done one by one and the messages will not be visible to anyone else except the two the connection is between.
More information on IC- mechanics of network posts can be found here.
When posting, both the initial poster and repliers' tags are to be formatted as CANON: Character's Canon Name. Additionally, the tags for +location, for type of post (#action or #network), and if applicable the !open tag should be applied.
Please also specify how the post was made in the subject line, such as if it was from a phone, computer, written in blood on the floor, etc.
