Black Dawn [OOC/Info/Interest]

by **Melkor Unchained** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 3:36 pm

Hello folks. In this thread I'll be coordinating player interest/storylines and various other notes and things for the plot which is meant to follow this story. Following the latest installment, things will start to move faster in Arda and around now is right around the point in the story where I had planned to open it up to public involvement.

For anyone not following the thread or who might need recap, basically what's going on now is both my and Nathi's heirs have had an assassination attempt carried out on them; and perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that a live recording of the event was broadcast without either government's knowledge or consent across both Arda and the Dominion. I won't get too far into what I plan on doing with the story, but we'll soon discover a large orcish vanguard and the plot will begin to develop more.

Anyway, as the name of the above-linked thread implies, it's a prologue to something larger: I will be re-introducing Morgoth before very long, depending on how events play out. A few things you should know/need to be thinking about if you're interested:

It won't take much research on the part of your government to discover the potential for widespread unrest in Xingu following the shooting. All the perpetrators appeared to be Xinguese, and elements of their society/aristocracy are unhappy with Xingu's current status within Arda.
Relevant to said unhappiness is the fact that Xingu is not one of Arda's Five Kingdoms (those being Dunland, Rhûn, Near and Far Harad, and Khand). Some want to be their own independent kingdom; some want to be a Republic and others still want to become one of Arda's Five Kingdoms. As of right now those groups are roughly equivalent to each other in terms of the influence they wield within Xingu.
Xingu is incredibly rich in mining resources; I won't rule out the presence of Mithril although I don't plan on pulling out trainloads of the stuff.
The footage of the shooting was about forty-seven seconds long and if your country received it, it will have interrupted all ongoing broadcasts at the time and in real time with few exceptions. After it is done, it will cut to a test pattern for however long it takes your government or media agencies to fix the problem.

One of my characters hinted in my latest post that the nature of the transmission suggests (but certainly doesn't prove) the involvement of Morgoth, or at the very least, a foreign government--but I don't want everyone who gets involved to be OMG SUPAR SUSPICIOUS about it possibly being Morgy right from the start: that's a fear I'm going to reserve mostly for my and Nathi's characters (and possibly our closer allies) for now unless someone can really wow me with a logical train of thought.

SO if you want in, be thinking about what your government might do as regards the Xingu situation, remembering of course that probably not everyone will get involved right off the bat: some governments may find the events in Xingu to be of little import, but could come running (one way or the other) once Morgoth's involvement is made clear to all and sundry. If anyone has questions feel free to post them in this thread or TG me; once I can think up a cool name for the story proper I'll get the thread up and we can get this going.

by **Melkor Unchained** » Tue Jun 21, 2011 7:17 pm

To clarify (since I've gotten some messages about this), you don't have to read the prologue thread--in fact in most important ways I would prefer you didn't until you've committed to the story since there's not really all that much in there that any of your characters are likely to know. It's all backstory stuff, and most of it references now (RL) years-old material. The only thing that's important right now is that someone just tried to kill the Ardan and Dominion heirs at the same time, and whoever it was had the wherewithal/ability to broadcast the event live to multiple nations across what I assume to be vastly different systems.

by **Spirit of Hope** » Tue Jun 21, 2011 8:23 pm

Ok, one question is on technology, You mentioned shooting and television broadcasts, while also implying that the nations were still on one planet so is this MT or PMT.
Second you mentioned orcs (I think) and Mithril, while also implying it was rare, so does this have fantastic elements, such as magic? And if it does how powerful/prevalent are these fantastic elements.

by **New Hayesalia** » Tue Jun 21, 2011 11:53 pm

I'm definetly interested, but the tech level could be handy here.

by **Melkor Unchained** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 7:17 am

Spirit of Hope wrote:Ok, one question is on technology, You mentioned shooting and television broadcasts, while also implying that the nations were still on one planet so is this MT or PMT.
Second you mentioned orcs (I think) and Mithril, while also implying it was rare, so does this have fantastic elements, such as magic? And if it does how powerful/prevalent are these fantastic elements.

I tend to RP magicstuffs in the same vein as Tolkien wrote them: it exists, but not in the sort of "snap your fingers and shit starts burning" sense that we commonly see in fantasy. It's subtle and behind-the-scenes: the only practitioner of real "magic" in Arda is the Maia Alkanphel, who is effectively Gandalf's successor as the steward of Arda/Middle Earth in modern times. These abilities are/can be powerful, but are hardly prevalent. Off the top of my head I can only think of one scene that's going to need to be anywhere near magic-y, although there might be one or two more after the war is in full swing.

That said, I plan on developing fairly early on that some Ardans practice alchemy, which as it happens is the basis for what we call 'magic,' although only the Ainur (gods) can use it to its fullest extent. Most of the alchemy done in Arda is still labwork--none of this "slap your hands together and shit starts flying around" like we see in Full Metal Alchemist, for instance.

As for tech, I myself am FT/PMT depending on the setting, and considering the requirements of the plot (Morgoth fled into deep space 20ish years ago) it pretty much has to be FT. There will be omg hueg space battles and all that good stuff.

EDIT: that doesn't necessarily mean you HAVE to be FT I guess, since tech discrepancies exist in the real world too. I'm going to give the players some latitude for action here obviously, but I'm more running a RP campaign than anything else. If you don't want to play PMT/FT you don't have to, but it's not like you'll get rampaged by orc hordes if you don't!

by **Spirit of Hope** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 1:21 pm

Ok, I'm interested. I'm fine with the PMT/FT aspects, I should be able to make that work and factor in some alchemy/magic. I would like to join, so is there anything I need to do to join and/or is there any thing you would like me to do in the RP?

by **Midlonia** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 1:30 pm

Spirit of Hope wrote:Ok, I'm interested. I'm fine with the PMT/FT aspects, I should be able to make that work and factor in some alchemy/magic. I would like to join, so is there anything I need to do to join and/or is there any thing you would like me to do in the RP?

Write awesome? That usually works.

by **Melkor Unchained** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 1:59 pm

Spirit of Hope wrote:Ok, I'm interested. I'm fine with the PMT/FT aspects, I should be able to make that work and factor in some alchemy/magic. I would like to join, so is there anything I need to do to join and/or is there any thing you would like me to do in the RP?

If you want to join I (eventually) need a list of characters you'll be using and I'll need to be notified by TG which ones can die and which ones can't. If I think you have too high a number of untouchable characters, I'll ask you to reconsider some of them. As far as military and economic assets are concerned, I have an 'all in' policy. By this I mean to say that all players should accept the possibility of complete military and/or economic destruction as the result of events in the story and the nations' actions relevant to them. If Arda is overwhelmed, for instance, Morgoth may move on to other targets. I won't give away much about the story in advance, but everyone (particularly the anti-Morgoth faction) should be prepared to take some serious losses/setbacks in the early parts especially. I personally will be killing off characters of my own and depending on how they react to events other players' characters should be in similar jeopardy. As a general rule, I will gauge their survival potential based mostly on combat ability and/or their political maneuvering skills, or on whatever other strengths and applications they might be using in the story.

Aside from this you don't have to tell me anything I wouldn't know ICly; for the purposes of the thread(s), interact with me as you would another player, but I'll have creative control over events in the story and will decide the outcome of confrontations and events based on what is written by the players. Remember that no one has to keep this story's outcome as canon or what-have-you, so I don't want players to be put off by the possibility of mass destruction. If it happens, it'll happen to me too.

Lastly (and this applies mostly to PMT/FTers I guess) I'm basically re-imagining the solar system for the purposes of this story. The possession of extraterrestrial assets will be decided upon between me and the the players before launch, but for practical reasons I can't afford to honor all and sundry other absentee players' claims on sol/space assets: there's no good reason why Morgy wouldn't attack those places too and I'd prefer not to struggle with justifications for why he's ignoring huge swaths of space and why we wouldn't just start hiding in them if he was. If you want it you can claim it, but I can't guarantee you can have it and if you do, you should be prepared to lose it (not that you will, just that it's probable or even likely!).

by **Melkor Unchained** » Sat Jun 25, 2011 11:57 am

Another thing (and this is kind of a shameless bump too, but hey) before I forget that might be important here is that time will pass during this story. The main narrative might not run in a linear fashion with yours; some story arcs might depend on events that happen weeks or even months later so the chronology might skip around a bit. The story will take a few IC years from start to finish, but exactly how long it lasts (or whether I just keep it going) I can't say.

When this gets going I'll set up a Table of Contents in the OP linking to each of my scenes which we'll use as a rough timeline. The scenes I write will be labelled by viewpoint character and iteration; my first post will cover Nadia, ~~Konrad~~ Naiya and Stepan I.~~But Nadia II and some other scenes still occur in the prologue;~~ the story 'proper' will begin after a key event at the end of that thread.

EDIT: Also, following a discussion with one of the players in IRC: I do not explicitly require any character/player death, I'm just saying you shouldn't join if you're not comfortable with the possibility. You're allowed to have main/untouchable characters of course, and I will work with the necessary players to get them through the story alive if they so wish. But if a character is left to their own devices and happens to make a (series of) poor decision(s), they may be put in a situation where their survival is unlikely or even impossible. I will avoid these scenarios with designated characters, but all others--including the wide majority if not all of mine--will face this jeopardy.

If, for example, someone runs a meek, physically inept non-combatant character who blunders into an unaccompanied encounter with an Ardan or Morgothi special forces operative may die. A hacker who makes a critical mistake may be found and apprehended (or worse), that sort of thing.

by **New Hayesalia** » Sat Jun 25, 2011 6:18 pm

Perhaps the Last Hayesalians could be in on this if it's FT. These guys are going to be hard, very hard, to kill, probably with more of their friends dying than anything. The only untouchable character is Brigadier X.

by **Melkor Unchained** » Sat Jun 25, 2011 6:51 pm

Looks awesome so far. I'll peruse it more closely and get back to you on how we can best work them in.

BUT! I would prefer players disclose in private (preferably via Telegram or IRC) rather than here which characters are main/untouchable and which one's aren't: we may want to write them in such a way as to confuse the reader, or keep her in suspense.

by **Dread Lady Nathicana** » Mon Jun 27, 2011 6:51 am

Geeze. Remember the Old Days, when this would have been snowballed by every meddlesome nation in existence, whether you wanted them to or not?

You know I'll be involved as discussed. I'm hoping Trez will be around for things as well - guess we'll see. As for the usual alliance entanglements, I don't think there should be any problems, all things considered. Which is probably for the best. I'll toss this link over towards some folks who might be interested but haven't seen, and see what happens.

The only thing I ask for is No Ridiculousness. All supernatural weirdness aside, granted. Hopefully we'll see some good writing out of this and not just a lot of picspam and *throws huge amounts of forced into the fray* "Post losses" business, because Hell Naw.

Lets get it on. :twisted:

by **New Hayesalia** » Mon Jun 27, 2011 7:03 am

Dread Lady Nathicana wrote:Geeze. Remember the Old Days, when this would have been snowballed by every meddlesome nation in existence, whether you wanted them to or not?

You know I'll be involved as discussed. I'm hoping Trez will be around for things as well - guess we'll see. As for the usual alliance entanglements, I don't think there should be any problems, all things considered. Which is probably for the best. I'll toss this link over towards some folks who might be interested but haven't seen, and see what happens.

The only thing I ask for is No Ridiculousness. All supernatural weirdness aside, granted. Hopefully we'll see some good writing out of this and not just a lot of picspam and *throws huge amounts of forced into the fray* "Post losses" business, because Hell Naw.

Lets get it on.

I will be adding the Last Hayesalians tab, which does contain many pictures. But it's necessary for ease of reference, and spoiler'd. Should be fun though.

by **Spirit of Hope** » Mon Jun 27, 2011 7:05 am

I do think that I now feel small and insignificant! It's like I've fallen into the old guy club... guess I'll have to make up for it by making good posts.

by **Dread Lady Nathicana** » Mon Jun 27, 2011 7:10 am

Hey now ... who you callin' old? >_>

by **Spirit of Hope** » Mon Jun 27, 2011 7:12 am

I don't know, you were only "Founded: Antiquity"

by **Dread Lady Nathicana** » Mon Jun 27, 2011 7:18 am

Just because I've been playing since May 2003 doesn't mean I'm 'old'.

Other evidence we shan't be discussing here.

(Melk, if you give me crap over that so help me, I will beat you. And not in a good way. *shakes fist*)

Anyways, yeah. Some of us have been developing these storylines for years. Doesn't mean there's not room for new folks to drop in. Kinda fun to add some new spins on the situation if nothing else.

by **New Hayesalia** » Mon Jun 27, 2011 7:37 am

That's why I keep it to a group of smugglers. Keeps everything simpler- FT can often be more confusing than MT in my experience.

by **Melkor Unchained** » Mon Jun 27, 2011 7:59 am

Dread Lady Nathicana wrote:Geeze. Remember the Old Days, when this would have been snowballed by every meddlesome nation in existence, whether you wanted them to or not?

You know I'll be involved as discussed. I'm hoping Trez will be around for things as well - guess we'll see. As for the usual alliance entanglements, I don't think there should be any problems, all things considered. Which is probably for the best. I'll toss this link over towards some folks who might be interested but haven't seen, and see what happens.

The only thing I ask for is No Ridiculousness. All supernatural weirdness aside, granted. Hopefully we'll see some good writing out of this and not just a lot of picspam and *throws huge amounts of forced into the fray* "Post losses" business, because Hell Naw.

Lets get it on.

I am going to want to vet many of the posts before they go up. I plan on being very hands-on with my GMming of this story; anyone who's not comfortable with that shouldn't join. There will be combat scenes no doubt, but I don't plan on having them be the focus since there's only so many ways you can write it and still make things interesting: I don't want players to get the impression that this is a " *throws huge amounts of forced into the fray* 'Post losses'"-type thread either. In the early parts of the story, the outcome of most military engagements will be predetermined, because I'll need to have Morgoth win a few battles early on or else I have no plot. It will, however, eventually reach a point where I will determine the outcome of battles based on what is written and what strategic or tactical mistakes--if any--the relevant players have made. Once I decide how the confrontation ends (remembering again that I will be very tough on the anti-Morgoth faction), I will report the outcome to the involved players at which time they and/or I can write the post that contains said confrontation/aftermath/what-have-you.

Basically, even though I don't plan on scripting the entire story, I will be deciding who wins battles/confrontations as the thread's GM. If a separate conflict arises between two players/characters/nations during these events, they'll either have to accept the outcome on which I decide, or they'll have to make their own thread where they can fight it out on their own.

EDIT: Oh, and if I think someone is metagaming me, I'm going to metagame them right back. For example, if I think someone has held off joining the story because they didn't want to take losses (pursuant to my minor spoiler above and hints elsewhere that Morgy will be winning at first) only to leap in later if things start to turn around, I'm going to make them regret it!

by **Midlonia** » Mon Jun 27, 2011 8:55 am

Dread Lady Nathicana wrote:Just because I've been playing since May 2003 doesn't mean I'm 'old'. Other evidence we shan't be discussing here.

(Melk, if you give me crap over that so help me, I will beat you. And not in a good way. *shakes fist*)

Anyways, yeah. Some of us have been developing these storylines for years. Doesn't mean there's not room for new folks to drop in. Kinda fun to add some new spins on the situation if nothing else.

Does that mean I can give you crap about it instead Nathi?

Who's age is REDACTED BY MODERATOR

As is, I will be joining in, expanding my role a little bit and playing angles that some folks may find surprising, may not. (All discussed with Melk obv.) I've wanted to play with Melkor for some time and we had some fun during the World Cup we played together and I have some idea of where I can go, how I can go about it and I am very pleased to have no clue how my efforts will pan out, so here goes!

by **Treznor** » Mon Jun 27, 2011 3:26 pm

Hmm...were I to participate, it is unlikely to be in any official military capacity, given the considerable history involved here. But I'm sure I could be counted on to complicate matters and muddy the waters as usual. If nothing else, I can be a thorn in various sides.

by **Kajal** » Mon Jun 27, 2011 10:29 pm

Heh, I must say, my interest is considerably piqued. Given certain ancient history between the Kajali and the Five Kingdoms, I see some possibilities worth pursuing here, especially as Kajal is coming off of a semi-apocalyptic event essentially of their own doing.

While certain characters (I'm sure you'll be able to list them without much effort) are unlikely to die by the end of it, the extreme possibility of them going into exile at the end of it is appealing, and as well, given that Kajal will most certainly be part of the anti-Morgoth faction, the outcome has all sorts of potential for really kickstarting a massive cultural and political shift that's been dragging for the past few years RL.

There may be a few niggles, but the only big ones I can see are that Kajal is not likely to be directly involved right at the start of this. The assassination attempts will definitely be common knowledge, having filtered through the usual channels, but not necessarily something that would have shown up in Kajali broadcasts; However, I'm comfortable leaving that up to you as befits the situation.

This should be fun. I'll have a TG of characters over shortly.

by **Alcona and Hubris** » Tue Jun 28, 2011 2:02 pm

You know, I've always wanted to Rp with you two. Nothing like discovering this thread the day I re-awaken this dormant nation. :blink:

But my thought is my participation should not be on a 'full' nation level but more on some large corporation trying to either maintain or gain access to the mineral wealth of Arda. Mainly this is because I really have to RP getting rid of whole pile of Vaadian republicans who have wound up all over my poor little nation before diving into this Rp.

My idea would be to use Quincy Mining, which has long been an almost pseudo-nation corporation with it's own 'security services' acting on behalf of, well itself. I'll have to generate a whole list of characters for it who will all be disposable, except for one that I might just have pop back up herself.

That is my idea currently. Any suggestions or criticisms of course Melkor.

by **Melkor Unchained** » Wed Jun 29, 2011 7:17 am

Okay! I like what I'm seeing so far and think I have enough people in the door to make this fun. People (including myself) should start working on or thinking about their first post. A few things to think about:

Your first post should focus on the reaction (if any) your people/government have to the shooting. If you want to assume a level of cultural, diplomatic, or military familiarity that hasn't been RP'd yet, that's fine. In fact, given my general inactivity in public RP we may have to invent reasons for various and sundry nations to care (although I guess if they still don't that's fine too, more on that in a minute), since my heir and even my empress are relative unknowns to the international community, and my emperor hasn't been active in world affairs for many years.
Arda's government is only a bit over twenty years old, and has only had widespread political and military control over the Ardan continent for about the last fifteen. The rebellion began in earnest 1032 of the Fifth Age in the Ardan calendar, and it's currently 1052. Morgoth was defeated and driven from Arda in 1037, but 'mop-up' operations and even sporadic set-piece battles were still ongoing for the next four years.
Anyone with military assets on the ground in Arda will be affected by my next post or two. Konrad will order all foreign units back to base and confine them to quarters. Rumors will begin to circulate that the emperor plans to expel or even kill (depending on how many of them there are) these forces as a precaution.
A couple players are wanting to work an arms smuggling angle; they have expressed to me an interest in having their characters somehow involved with the Xinguese arms trade. Now, there are people in Xingu who are loyal to the throne, so unless you're wanting/trying to pull a fast one on the Ardan government your support will probably be going to them. Even then, Arda has fairly lax gun control laws so we'll need to think of a good reason why we would need to import arms rather than simply use the ones we make ourselves. Ardans are by no means juche socialists, but whether we wanted to or not we developed a tendency for self-sufficiency under Morgoth. Foreign weapons would be relatively new and (to the trained eye) easy to spot.
Sign-ups are still OPEN and anyone can still join the story. But as it progresses, there are some doors that may close as regards the nature/extent of your involvement.

I want the tone of these first posts (at least the parts dealing with the transmission of the assault, and your reactions to its reception) to be hectic and uncertain. The assault itself doesn't have to matter to your characters, but the fact that someone was able to beam live footage into (possibly) every channel across the globe simultaneously should cause some alarm. The attack will have been carried out to interrupt the 6 o'clock (morning) news in Xingu, which as we saw in the OP is in Arda's extreme east. This means the attack itself will have occurred at about 2100 local time at Fort Lannistar, as Arda is roughly the size of Eurasia from east to west, which would put Dunland 8 or 9 hours behind Xingu. Be thinking about where your nation/capital is relative to Arda. Unless someone here has RL land claims I prefer to ignore them; although as I understand it Nathi occupies an exaggerated alternate reality Italy. if it's possible simply imagine Arda as taking Asia's place on the map, and someone else (you?) occupying the position of various other continents. You can be as close or as far as you want from Arda, but unless it becomes impossible I want our game world to be roughly the size of earth. We may or may not need a map eventually, but the location of nations relevant to each other could become important later on.

Since these will be the first, I'll want to be vetting the posts before they go up. Please send me a draft in TG or we can work it out in a Google Document, even if we've talked about it in TG or IRC already--I just want to make sure we don't have any crossed wires out of the gate.

by **Butmanlands** » Wed Jun 29, 2011 8:29 am

My chars.

Black Dawn [OOC/Info/Interest]

Black Dawn [OOC/Info/Interest]

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