Hi players, this post is going to be long because of how Involved™ this event is, please drink water as you read this. Thanks.

SETTING UPDATES:

• Happy autumn! Pumpkins are growing out of the ground in completely random spots, and some out of your buildings/houses. Whoops. It’s fine, they won’t damage the buildings thaaaat much, and they can be harvested for pumpkin pie or a snack. Weirdly, some of them contain assorted candy instead of pumpkin guts. Don’t think about it too hard.
• Flamebringer has set up a tattoo/piercing shop in the North Grove. That’s it, that’s the update, have fun getting inked by a guy with questionable morals.
• Ezell has set up a bunny bakery as well this month. It's a bakery, but there are bunnies running around that you can pick up and love on. 10/10.
• We are aware that the Guardians have been up to… many things since our last update, so we thought we’d consolidate recent updates, especially for the new folks:
  • Moder is still Moder-ing. With the arrival of autumn, she no longer grows pretty mosses and flowers along her back. Instead, she is sporting a permanent blanket of orange and yellow leaves, but is still about 85% fleshy. She, notably, has started avoiding the barn…
  • …because Zonari is sitting on top of it these days. Zonari will mostly continue to file her nails and watch you guys do things, and won’t actively interfere in things. You’re welcome to continue trying to domesticate her. Zonari is not a Guardian, she is The Creature/The Forest/The False God/Suri’s construct; the Zahliyaquest Recap has the whole explanation of her there.
  • Zahliya, however, who is a Guardian and is legally her cousin who she calls “brother”, is Not Fucking Happy about her presence here, but he’s learnt to go along with what you guys say. He will be seen on the Church roof, peacocking and raising his wings in a threat display, especially if further monsters happen. (And they will! :) )
  • Callan moves between the lake and Siffrin’s room, where he has a fishtank (his “mobile home” he calls it). He is otherwise completely unbothered by Zonari.
  • Sinann is, as stated last month, larger and able to talk to people normally without the bone ring. It is happy to have conversation, but still has to keep to the relative region of the river.
  • Aurora is still dead. She stirred a bit ago, but she has not yet come back to life. Having a name and Beat’s wish have helped her, though.
• Sometimes, players may be lovingly accosted by a group of wandering, sentient skeletons holding trumpets and drums and other band kid instruments. The leader of them is, of course, Mr. Bone-Jangles, who has reappeared several times before (last October and April) and is trying his damn best to spread more joy around because you kids are depressed and he wishes for you to have joy.

PLOT UPDATES:

• Unfortunately for Mr. Bonejangles, the depression continues! :) This month’s event is also completely experimental so please bear with us mods, we don’t usually do these.
• This month’s event and therefore this month’s cease and desist letter in our inbox is based on a few IPs: Jordan Peele’s “Us”, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and Phasmophobia. Mostly the first and last. There will be signups for certain aspects of this event, so please check out those comments if you want to be raffled in for some fun. Also if you haven’t seen “Us” and you want to, close this post and go watch it real quick and come back in 2 hours when you’re done, because there are going to be spoilers for the general ideas, surprise.
• At the beginning of the month, your “Others” will appear. They look like you, they act like you, and they talk like you, and they are, as far as you’re aware, “just like you”. Except for the fact they want to murder you and take your place. For the month, characters will have to avoid getting murked by their Others, but the good news is, the Others can be killed! They’ll be difficult to kill off, like all things here are, but that’s a small boon. Your Others are perfectly content to kill others, too, provided they can get them somewhere alone, because their goal…
• …is to replace you. Take your life, your identity, and be “you” for the rest of time. Characters who are killed and replaced by their Others will not immediately return to life. Though they won’t suffer death consequences in the Garden, they will temporarily go to A Secondary Location™: A creepy wooden mansion that mysteriously appears somewhere in the middle of the woods. Their spirits will be trapped here, haunting these halls until they’re rescued.
  • Some characters will be automatically start the month doppelgangered. Aka, they were killed or captured (depending on player preference, since we don’t want to Force death on anyone) quietly in the night and brought to/woke up in the wooden mansion, unable to leave, where they will haunt the halls. The Others will take their place in the Grove and, preferably, act natural but “slightly off”. Perhaps they don’t remember someone’s birthday, or their relationship with someone, or a fact from the past. We are asking you to play what you think your character’s doppelganger would be!
    • This is based on signups and has an RNG component to it. We’re estimating 3-5 characters that start as their Others this month, but that depends on signups. We will contract the people who get selected to be doppelgangers privately, but please let us know your preferred contact method (and if you prefer Plurk & the mods aren’t on your plurklist, we recommend adding us at wolfchan & amity_rose ASAP).
    • You may sign up as many characters as you want, i.e. Aspen can sign up both Vash and Luca — but unless player engagement is super low for this, only ONE of your characters will be selected. This is so that the odds aren’t stacked against people who play one character. (We will RNG based on player, not character; characters will be RNG’ed afterwards if we land on a winner that has multiple signups.) Signups close Oct. 2nd, at which point we will RNG people.
  • We want players who sign up for this to keep the fact that they’re doppelgangered or not secret from the rest of the players! We’d like this information to come out organically through your threads and be discovered ICly through hard work, investigations, or funny slip-ups.
  • If you aren’t selected to start the month doppelgangered, you’re still free to be replaced later on in the month, but in the interest of not mucking up the mod-RNG’ed characters, please try to include the doppelganger mention in any toplevels/threads you write. This is our attempt on keeping it fair on all sides, we are welcome to feedback if anyone has a better idea.
• As for the rescue, that’s where the second half of the event comes in. Players who sign up for our second round of signups and are not doppelgangers will get to go to the Spooky Mansion to rescue the spirits and return those characters from kidnapping/spirit jail. Of course, that’s easier said than done, considering your own Others might just follow you inside to try killing you off.
  • This exploration will be partially mod-guided and will be done in a separate post about mid-month. Characters who are haunting the mansion will feel a burst of ghostly silliness toward the living — you could try to kill them even though they’re here to rescue you, or you could try to jumpscare them, or maybe just throw canned soup at their heads. Other “NPC” spirits filled in by the mod team might be either silly or hostile.
  • We encourage toplevelling and tagging on that new post. We want our ghosts to tag our living and vice versa. And, to reiterate: Unless you are our beginning-of-month doppelganger victims OR you decide to doppelganger yourself before we get the post up, your slot in the rescue is guaranteed.
• The rescue will take place over the course of… five nights. :) Please laugh.
• Spirits will be rescued by finding The Thing Keeping Them Tethered There. More details will be provided on the secondary event log.
• This event is very involved and we’re aware of that, so a recap of the “rules” will be posted in a comment below to avoid scrolling. This is our first time trying something like this and we hope it’s fun. If you guys hate it though please let us know, we can handle it.

OOC UPDATES:

• This is our last TDM of the year! November and December will not be TDMs, so the next will be in January. In November, we will be running a player plot, and December will be relatively calm to account for the holidays.
• The TDM portion is the first log; the rescue log is NOT a TDM and is locked to only active characters/players.
• Yes, Wolfie (hi this is Wolfie) is aware that the map is still a mess, please just refer to the Locations page for now and ignore the map until I can get it fixed. I am so sorry.
• Any questions/feedback/complaints/suggestions/egg-throwing can be directed to the mods as always!

Please use the following form for plotting:

Character:
Status: Who is your character? What did they get up to last month and how is it impacting this month? Did they discover something? Are they harboring a clue? HMM
Seeking: Any CR or plot thread you want to kickstart!
Not Seeking: Anything you'd like to avoid.
Anything Else: A permissions post, opt-in for a character-specific power or whatever else.
Meme: you know you have one.

<strong>Character:</strong> <strong>Status:</strong> <strong>Seeking:</strong> <strong>Not Seeking:</strong> <strong>Anything Else:</strong> <strong>Meme:</strong>