Plot Post for December 3rd!

[theearth]

This format of plot post is designed for players to ask questions and find ways to influence the plot. Be bold and ask what you can or can't do; the worst that can happen is that we will say no. As plots in Save the Earth are not self resolving nor on a time limit, they can evolve in many ways. Although some potential outcomes are given, they are little more than suggestion and can be changed by character action. What role you take is up to you.


The post is also open for players to plot and coordinate between one another.

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State of current events:


• EARTHQUAKE. That’s right, one of the worst quakes ever to hit Locke City, a 5.5, struck this Tuesday afternoon, thanks to Brooke and Danny’s investigation. It affected half the east coast, with its epicenter at Tuning Towers and Locke City’s business district. Damage is most severe there: though none of the larger buildings have collapsed completely, many have warped structures, cracked foundations, and shattered windows. Cracks have also opened in the earth around Tuning Towers, though none of them stretch deep enough to reach the vein of pink rock. Since this was a very busy area, the death toll is reported at over a hundred, with more injured. The buzzing, mercifully, has stopped.


• Thunder Corp has put the word out: they are hiring! Hiring construction workers, that is. They have put on public presentations explaining that they intend to turn the Dead District into -- well, they haven’t specified exactly what it is. It’s a big project, though, and they’re throwing around all kinds of words like economic boost and cutting-edge; the PR is excellent. At any rate, it’s common knowledge that anyone who applies to work on Thunder Corp’s Dead DIstrict renovation will have the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art engineering equipment. It seems to be a big hit: citizens are signing up in droves, but for some reason, during the presentations, they look very blank-eyed...


• Organized crime is on the rise in Locke City, and the gang name on everybody’s lips is the Blood Keys! They operate around the perimeter of the Dead District. With their ample weapon supply, deadly reflexes, trendy sunglasses, and uncanny instinct for avoiding the police, all they have to do is open their shirts to reveal the key-shaped tattoo on their breastbone and most anyone will hand over his or her valuables. Everyone who has so far stood up to the Blood Keys has been killed. The police have filed the reports and promise they are taking action in the area, but those living near the Dead District hold out little hope of official assistance and have seen no more patrol cars than usual. Your best option? Hide your valuables and hope the Blood Keys don’t look too hard. They do all wear sunglasses, though there are no other obvious signs.


• There are moving snake statues on the loose again, numbers club: this time, in an old, disused subway tunnel. As detailed here, a team of reincarnates found a crazy ol’ sculptor skulking around. He’s made quite a few of those snake statues, and while many are animate, you’re not sure how many animate ones are roaming around the subway lines. In addition, that defunct subway line runs directly below a very populous neighborhood. Take care.

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Events occurring in the immediate future:


• Detective Jason Sherman has gotten his hands on a couple of the reincarnates. He’s intending to turn as many traitor as he can, to make allies among the numbers club. Anyone who is arrested will either have to break out or convince him of your loyalty and give him the identities of other reincarnates. Arrests will be made, although you as a player may opt out if approached by a mod.


• Thunder Corp wasn’t lying about their state-of-the-art technology: construction in the Dead District will proceed remarkably quickly, with a very large, single building taking shape. It’s still too early to tell what the structure is for, but it doesn’t look like neighborhoods, shops, or offices.

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Potential Echo opportunities:

Visiting Tuning Towers will no longer grant an Echo. However, encountering animate snakes in the subway tunnels will grant one Echo (only one, not one per snake). Encountering a member of the Blood Keys will also grant one Echo (likewise, only your first encounter with a gang member will grant an Echo).


Please direct questions regarding these plot points to the General Questions thread below and not the post in general.

In addition, plot posts will now also be accompanied by a What You Know thread, under which players are free and encouraged to OOCly recap, corroborate, and discuss information already ICly known/available on plot points at large. To get the ball rolling, an example sub-thread will be posted to this post's main thread.

Comments

GENERAL QUESTIONS

[theearth]

[skycutter]

Hoo boy here we go with deluge of questions.

TC-related: Do the blank stares of the construction workers continue on til after the fancy presentation or not? Would a reincarnate be similarly affected if they join in? Would Miles be allowed to sit in/watch the presentation from outside the room for the heck of it? Or even watch over the reconstruction of the district itself?

Similarly, would reincarnates be affected by the Blood Keys' influence? In addition, would an animal be able to detect something off about one of the gang's members?

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[glorifiedtrash]

Does this mean Thunder Corp will no longer be doing their excavating at the Tuning Towers and will the police perimeter there be dispersed?

Can I have info on the inanimate snake statues too since Zelos would have checked those out and it sounds like they're markedly different from the animated ones. I'd also like to know what he would have seen about how they were built in Proud's layer; there'd be half finished ones I'm assuming or some signs of whatever work Proud did?

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[epimethean]

SO. Following Ray's interrogation and promise that he'd bring names to the cops, Wheatley offered to set up a collection of internet presences for fake people (social network pages, dummy websites, etc. all actively updating), and has put out a a call for tech savvy types to a) help make them as convincing as possible b) bury those actually making/maintaining the fake personas under like a billion proxies and encryptions so that everything is as untraceable as possible. The idea is to let Ray use the fake names to throw off the cops and stall for time while...they...go for a Plan B that he hasn't figured out yet.

He is fully aware that it will probably be largely ineffective and/or won't stall things for long, as fake people on the internet can be pretty easy to spot provided you know what you're looking for. He also doesn't know how savvy the cops are when it comes to that sort of thing. BASICALLY just looking to ask if it would be at all successful and/or general consequences for sending the cops on a wild goose chase through the internet.

[show_my_cannons]

Is there going to be any sort of rescue effort for the injured and/or dead in the earthquake area? Like would the police be able to be involved? Would civilian volunteers?

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[not_good_not_wicked]

Can people who got an echo from the original log of chasing Proud through the subways still get another one from the snakes, or were they just the very first people to get an echo this way?

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[healspec]

FORGET THAT ONE I HAVE A BETTER QUESTION

Ravi's magic is Super Effective against anything that would be classified as 'evil'. Obviously that is like, super subjective, but in terms of species basically anything that'd be weak to holy magic if you threw it in an RPG may qualify, and in terms of personality, people who lack a conscience/compassion but have the capacity for such. Also applies to people corrupted by the essence of something evil, like say demonic influence in an otherwise good person.

SO. Blood Keys. Evil or no?

[espigeonage]

Is there anything unusual about Blood Key eyes? Or... in general? Julien won't be at all close to any of them until the clinic is attacked, he's benefiting from his stealth thing, but he's got the eyes and can see through sunglasses, to an extent.

Would there be anything to notice upon attending one of the construction stuff presentations? Are the prospective employees ones who've taken tainted water?

[earnedmystripes]

Kotetsu has been trying to organize a alien dog kidnapping to try to find out how they are tracking down the reincarnates. How would it go/repercussions?

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[dorkytracksuit]

is it possible to post plot things a little beforehand in the future? not trying to be a bitch but i think it would help people out to plot ways to foster cr with crises like this earthquake and etc. like if something big was happening tuesday maybe we can find out on wednesday?

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[drama8om8]

What are the police's instructions on what to do if they should spot Alan or Octavia - arrest them again, or shoot on sight (and would this change if they were displaying obviously non-human attributes or using weird-ass powers)?

Also mind control related questions. Octavia has been practicing a lot since getting her power back months ago, so is it safe to assume she's better at it than she used to be (just being able to exert her influence more easily/powerfully, not "oh goodness I can control twenty people at once this is super I AM A GODMODING QUEEN")? And what would be the result if she attempted to control one of the Blood Keys into handing over all their possessions - including the sunglasses and any weapons they might be carrying?

Edit: Also not a question, but just noting that Alan and Octavia's echoed items will be getting ganked out of police custody todayish via a purposely-induced temporary echo loss. SUCK IT COPS FIGHT THE POWER ETC ETC

[professorwolf]

UNSURPRISING QUESTION IS UNSURPRISING. Blood Keys. Scents. Anything strange about them?

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[worldmother]

We know the condition of the buildings in the DD and business districts, as well as the area around TC, but have there been any reported damages to the building itself and what are they, if any? Also how deep was the epicenter? What is the general atmosphere in these areas, both from the civilians as well as the police? Are they letting normal traffic through? What PC-related businesses are affected?

On the 100 dead, what's the cause being cited, specifically? Luci's personally going to look into this, because that number sounds way too high, even if the epicenter was only a mile or two below surface level.

Also, are there any proposed plans for the building currently being constructed, and do we have an estimated date of completion available publicly? And do you need to be over 18 to apply for any of the construction jobs? There should be some kind of building permit and a posting of intended use of land somewhere on the perimeter (I believe that this is required by law in most states).

Can we get more of a specification on where the defunct subway runs, since I know some people might want to play with that a little, so we know what areas specifically are affected.

[reapsthewind]

WHAT HAPPENS if someone tries to hunt down Blood Keys? Say, if someone who could sort-of (loudly) fly were to hang around the Dead District in the evening hours looking for people wearing sunglasses at night?

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[hawaiianheir]

What's the word on the street when it comes to the Blood Keys? How early did they spring up, how many members do they have, what's the info that Mac could tap into his past delinquent connections for?

Also, how much of the Dead District is still 'Dead', so to speak? I've been headcanoning that Mac and his old gang had a hideout there, but I want to sort of know if a livef-in warehouse of sorts would trip anyone's radars and/or have been leveled by the construction effort.

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[wastingtime]

If one of the PCs stood up to the Blood Keys, would they necessarily be killed as opposed to just...well. Mugged?

Also, I posted on the FAQ but ima bring it over here too;

From what I understand, the boundary/center of Echoes has been identified (or at least narrowed to an X and/or dotted lines on a map), so Elian's moved on to another sort of experiment. Namely, examining the qualities of extradimensional/echo'd items.

SCIENCE TECHNOBABBLE TL;DR'D because HE may teach quantum stuff but I sure as hell don't, are there any unusual qualities to the items that could be identified via an electron microscope or, ideally, a scanning tunneling microscope (assuming Locke University has one; I assume that they have the former if not the latter)? NAMELY a common thread between them all; Elian has a theory that they're going to hold some residue from not being 'native' to this dimension, so that's what he's looking for, basically.

His current working theory is that the Numbers Club is/are connected on some level to other dimensions, but nothing near reincarnation or anything. More like, for lack of a better phrase, they're resonating on the same frequency as other beings, and so sharing memories/items/powers/etc.
This also explains where the missing left socks go when you do laundry. To those other dimensions. They may or may not fall through the theorized 'thinner' dimensional area around the Tuning Towers.

[detectivetroll]

Just a couple of questions this time!

Mainly, would it be possible to get a quick overview of what Nick knows about Sherman and the corrupt cops as of now? He's been planning on sharing what he finds with the network, and since other people are starting to try to plan on getting info from Sherman, I'd like to get something up with what he knows.

Basically - what does he know, if anything, about the aliens (where did they come from, why are they here, what is their arrangement with the corrupt cops, etc.), what does he know about the people with superhuman abilities they're hunting for (where did they come from, why do they have these powers, etc.), and finally, what does he know about the corrupt cops (who's involved, who is Nick reporting to, what's the chain of command for this, are there any opposing viewpoints within the corrupt cops, etc.)

He'll have been taking every opportunity to chat with Sherman, while giving him info from Ray or things like the video from Angela's case, and possibly during the cover up of Karl's plot, if he was allowed to be involved with that, so he can ask as many questions as possible without seeming suspicious.

My other questions had been about the Blood Keys gang, but most of them have been asked, so I'll just go with: is there anything not human about the members that Nick could pick up on?

And finally, one for Benjamin! State-of-the-art engineering equipment is a giant draw for him, would it be possible for him to attend the presentations under the not-really-fake-guise of an engineering professor curious about the equipment and attempt to strike up conversation with the presenters/employees?

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[darkhourdear]

Neku hasn't run into the snakes to fight them yet so I hadn't thought to ask before, but would his Player Pin protect him from the message being bored into everyone else's heads?

[earnedmystripes]

What are the police's actual orders wrt the Blood Keys? Would they be different for non-conspiracy cops and ones in with Sherman? bc Nick is quietly feeding info to Kotetsu and Yuji, so I'm wondering if there's something either of them would know.

Also, what would the Blood Keys do if confronted by a police officer?

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[shiromadoushi]

Soooo if some idiot were to actually fight back against the Blood Keys, how bad would that go?

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[strikeraid]

So what if a stupid stupid boy decided trying to join the Blood Keys was a fantastic idea?

Re: GENERAL QUESTIONS

[siesinddasessen]

Last plotting post, I asked about the kids that Blaine watched doing something stupid and getting themselves in danger while searching for the superhero that Sho told them about. That hasn't happened yet.

Would it be okay to have them venture into that subway tunnel and prompt a reincarnate rescue mission? What do the animate statues do when non-reincarnates are around?

Airplanes?

[reapsthewind]

okay so

Suzaku mentioned an airplane going to the military base...

Is this the same type of plane as the ones Chris sabotaged? Make, model, does it have a tail number, etc?

[testsonseashells]

Are the Blood Keys any more resistant to firearms than usual? Also, how vulnerable are they to electric/neural shocks?

[sun_sun]

OK so this is a dumb question but I need to ask it if I am to take any action logs this month seriously: What are snakes with legs supposed to actually look like? Where are the legs attached?

Because this is all I can imagine for the shape of the statues: