Monthly Post & CR Meme #6: Smooth Sailing

[beautifuldreamermods]

MONTHLY POST

Happy spooky month, Dreamers! A HUGE thank you to everyone who participated in last month's Disturbance event – I hope it was a blast! I've mentioned elsewhere that introducing Disturbances are one of the plot beats I was most excited about and I'm really happy to see they went over well! Just as a quick reminder, there will not be a mod-run event this month. October is intended to be a 'chill' month – though players are free to continue doing Excursions and Torment Hunts, investigate metaplot stuff, all the usual business! This break is just to give everyone a breather after our first Disturbance event and to give me some time to finish writing up the Disturbance documentation for player perusal... and to plot something extremely tasty for November's event.

In short, we would like for November's mod event to be a Disturbance event featuring a player character. This means that we'll be asking players to sign up and volunteer their characters and over the next month or so, we'll be working with them to create a kickass dungeon log and a cool boss design for them to run with everyone!

After that, Disturbance player plots will be open to everyone! We won't be able to officially start running them until after the new year, but we're SUPER PUMPED to open this aspect of the world up to the playerbase and see what kickass and creative things you guys do with it.

For more deets and to sign up, check out the usual event preview section.

Like last month, we have no major OOC updates but there are one or two things to watch out for!


⧖ Reminder! As well as this month, we will also be having a event break month in December to cool down from our second Disturbance event and because it's the holidays and we expect everyone will probably be pretty busy! Players are, of course, free to run their own mingles/parties/mini events this month so go ham!

⧖ NPC interaction requests on monthly posts have been lightly revamped! Each monthly post will now have a truncated CR meme-ish comment for each available NPC with a quick recap of what their deal is and what they're up to this month. To request an NPC interaction, just comment to the appropriate header and we'll hash out a quick handwaved interaction. We're hoping this makes it easier for players to build relationships and dynamics with our NPC cast, so definitely jump in if you would like!

⧖ Our first How's The Game session will be running this month, on October 10th! I originally intended for it to happen with the six month anniversary, but given that we'll be having a second Disturbance event then, I felt like things would probably be a bit too busy – and having a feedback session between our first and second Disturbances will probably work better in terms of getting people's freshest thoughts and incorporating that feedback into the next event. In place of that planned HTG, there will be a love meme for us all to gush about how much we love each other's special little guys which feels much more in keeping with the mood of the whole thing.

⧖ And on that note – the game's six month anniversary is next month! Holy crap! There will also be a few just-for-fun additions to a few of the game's info pages so keep an eye out come next monthly post!


That's all from us! We're hoping this chill month gives everyone time to cook and potentially to get into new and exciting kinds of trouble and that everyone's excited about picking back up with our usual back of nonsense next month!






At the beginning of the month, an official communication from the DU goes out to all registered Dreamers.


Thank you to all Dreamers who were able to attend to last month's emergency on such short notice. We recognize that the lacking information and urgency of this situation made things stressful on a number of levels but for the sake of full transparency - those of us here at the DU knew about as much as we were able to tell everyone involved. Calling this an abnormality in our understanding of the Dream Sphere is underselling it: this is, to our knowledge, an entirely knew phenomenon and we are doing everything in our power to analyze all data gathered and provide further understanding of exactly how this occured later down the line.

What we can and are happy to confirm is that Mio Kasuga has returned to her home following her rescue from the heart of this abnormality. She does not appear to be any worse for wear but is understandably confused and experiencing some emotional distress following what happened. Most surprising of all is that upon waking up back in her home, both Mio and her parents have confirmed that she arrived with a Sandglass in hand, suggesting that she achieved some form of Awakening while over in the Dream Sphere.

DU-associated councillors are arranging for continued support and care of the family as long as it is necessary to provide it and the family have asked that we convey their thanks in intervening. The DU itself would like to highlight the effort and courage displayed by Dreamers Chaosbringer, Guardian, Cinnabar and Tycoon who were instrumental in resolving this situation. If and when possible, we ask that you provide any relevant testimony on your experiences to a registered DU officer as soon as you can.

Once more, we extend our thanks and commend all those who continue to fight in the Dream Sphere and take on challenges such as this. It's only through everyone's individual contributions that our combined efforts can bear fruit.

With regards,
Chloe Yoshino
Director of the Dreamer Union

EVENT INFO & TIMELINE

Now that players have gotten their first look at what a Disturbance event can look like, we're now excited to announce that we'd like our second Disturbance event to be focused on a player character! This is always the form Disturbance events were supposed to take, as a way for players to give their characters a day in the spotlight and use BD's mechanics and lore to explore their inner conflict and struggles. During our break month, we plan to work behind the scenes to help one of our players create their own Disturbance and to run it as part of November's event.

To recap from our previous monthly post: Disturbances are surreal dreamscapes draw directly on the struggles, fears and emotions of a single character and create a large-scale dungeon incubating a powerful enemy at its core. Not only must this enemy be defeated in combat but to save the person at the Disturbance's core, a Dreamer needs to be able to reach them emotionally as well. That's what mahous are supposed to do, right?

To that end, we are opening signups for this! Both Dreamers and mundane characters can sign up to be featured in this event. The only requirement is that the character must have some emotional conflict they are seeking an escape from and it should be prominent enough to be twisted into the desire to abandon the real world in favor of the Dream Sphere.

Sign up with the form below – just fill it out and reply to the signups toplevel. Our final selection will be selected by RNG and we ask that if you're picked, you keep this a secret so we can properly surprise everyone! Though obviously, if this affects your plans, please feel free to tell people in private.

Signups will close on October 13th.

Signups:
<b>Player Name:</b> <b>Contact:</b> <b>Character Name:</b> <B>Anything Else?:</b>

CR Planning Form:
<b>Player Name:</b> <b>Contact:</b> <b>Introduction:</b> <b>Character Name:</b> <b>Canon:</b> <b>About:</b> (Give us a quick outline of your character! Think of this as a brief introduction to get everyone on the same page.) <b>Short Term & Long Term Plans:</b> (If you have any, of course! You can also use this section to pitch the general shape of The Vibes you're shooting for in your arc and see if anyone else can help you brainstorm it.) <b>Desired CR:</B> (This is the big one! If you're looking for particular CR, pitch it here!) <B>Anything Else?:</b> i fully expect this to be meme central but i'm adding it anyway

WORLD UPDATES

Thankfully for everyone, October brings with it a break in the excessive heat from last month. Temperatures are still pretty summery but things are no longer quite as humid and there's a lot of cloudy, rainy weather taking the edge off the relentless sunshine. Late September through the start of October is also when autumn starts making its way through Yumemigaoka, so expect to see leaves turning and trees going bald all around the city. The month in general will be pretty unseasonably warm but temperatures will finally start to drop in earnest at the midpoint of October going into early November and a nice autumny chill will hang in the air just in time for Halloween.



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WORLD EVENTS

⧖ All Month: With Halloween not far off, spooky spirits and scary movies are on everyone's minds - and as a result, Torment activity is up! The Reverie Necropolis will be buzzing with activity this month and as such, Dreamers will be encouraged to focus on it for their hunts. Torment Hunts conducted in the Reverie Necropolis this month will receive bonus points for each character.

⧖ October 1st - 6th: Following the Disturbance manifestation last month, Asagi Ward will continue to experience minor aftershocks for the first week or so of October.

⧖ October 6th: Matsuba World Market starts hosting their seasonal Harvest Market, selling fresh fruit and vegetables direct from a network of local farmers who have provided their fruits of their labour to the store. Items available will rotate every week until mid November.

⧖ October 9th - 13th: It's the least wonderful time of the year for students again - midterms are already back. But so long as you spent a good amount of time on your summer homework and studying then you should have it in the bag, right? R--RIGHT?

⧖ October 10th: The Vale of Sorrow will successfully reconnect to the rest of the Dream Sphere and be available as an Outgoing Location again from this date forward.

⧖ October 15th: Pure☆Candy announces that 'Miomio' is retiring from the group effective immediately with no graduation concert, citing 'health concerns'. Fan reaction is largely negative, though pleasantly enough the majority seems to be backlash against Pure Candy's management for seemingly overworking her to the point of damaging her health rather than Mio herself. A–all's well that ends well?!??!

⧖ October 16th - 31st: TIME TO GET SPOOKY!! Halloween is still a relatively new tradition in Yumemigaoka but the town is nicely decorated and businesses will be getting into the spirit with seasonal goods and mountains of candy to buy. Moon Bunny Market will be running a trick-or-treat themed stamp rally for the kids and holding weekly costume contests with goody bag prizes (still just for the kids I'm afraid) every Saturday until the month ends.

⧖ October 21st-22nd: The Riverwalk Theater will be screening a number of classic horror movies all during the month, capped off with a marathon screening of the legendary supernatural horror series Omens. The first three movies will run on Saturday with the final trilogy running on Sunday.

!★! October 30th: The Dreamer Union will be hosting a Halloween party with an invite extended to all Dreamers! Starting at around noon, the all-ages half of the party will be hosted at the DU office in the Waking World and wrapping at six... with a 21+ afterparty for the grown ups to get a little goofy hosted exclusively in the Dream Sphere. Hey, you can't get hungover so long as you only dreamed about drinking that much, right?

⧖ October 31st: It's Halloween!!! While not quite as infamous as Shibuya, Yumemigaoka hosts its own Halloween street party in Koubai where everyone is encouraged to dress up and have a ball! The party starts at around noon and continues well into to the next morning and while things do get a bit rowdy later at night, it's generally all in good fun.

AC RESULTS

The following characters have received a strike as a result of the previous month's activity check:


breezyplayboy
determinationtofist
dullshooter
glimmeringruby
loungelizard
meteorman
moonlight_fuser
noonecandestroythemetal


Strikes will automatically clear after one month of passing AC, so don't sweat too much!

The following characters have been removed for the game for failing to clear a strike:


considergun
howlmyrage
illrested
wracktor
yourattention


Sorry to see you go!

If there are any mistakes or errors, please don't hesitate to contact the mods and let us know.

code

Comments

[darcangel]

Player Name: Mari
Contact: gibberditz
Introduction: 30something lesbrarian in Pittsburgh, owned by a living fuzzy water balloon that occasionally chooses to resemble a cat.

Character Name: Jeannette d'Arc
Canon: Symphogear XDU

About: ...she's Joan of Arc. But as an anime lesbian. So she has a big selfless heart and boundless confidence and despite being a Saver her battle style is "LEEEEEROY JENKIIIINS". Her "angel" is a rogue Dreamer who saved her life years ago, and she's been unofficially mentored ever since, though she joined the DU at the start of the game and her Official Mentor is Ai. As a veteran Dreamer despite being a high schooler, Dreamer La Pucelle is eager to go on Excursions and protect her beloved home.

Short Term & Long Term Plans: Jeannette continues to seek clout in the DU! She was away for a good portion of the summer visiting extended family, but now she's back and hoping to catch up. She and Ai will probably go looking for Dreamer Crimson, since La Pucelle was one of the first people to sort-of encounter Crimson. And dream-died in the process. CAN YOU BELIEVE CLAIRE LIT JOAN OF ARC ON FIRE.

Desired CR: I'm just coming back to the game after a month or so away, so everything's good! People for Jeannette to mentor. Older Dreamers for her to hang out with and confuse with how absolutely sure she is of herself. More girls her age to move into her family's apartment complex and fall in love with her WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING I DON'T KNOW BUT I DON'T WANT IT TO STOP IT IS VERY FUNNY. **People who can get her involved in The Overarching Plot!**

Anything Else?:

I've plurked this before but it's my favorite. She is safe now.

[miracle_miruca]

I'm not sure I even need to respond to you since Miruca has already made her plans obvious, but I'll set up a log for it sometime soonish. Not going to wait until the actual day so we have max time for cuteness.

Though not that I need to suck up ALL of your time, but if you really want someone to mentor, Miruca is still a novice. Then she can have a crush on her teacher.

[darcangel]

A crush on her teacher....who has a crush on her teacher. IT'S CRUSHES ALL THE WAY DOWN

[miracle_miruca]

Its fine because they're the same age!