September 2022 Substories!

[jigokumods]

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SUBSTORY #1	SUBSTORY #2
The Left Swiping Shall Continue Until Morale Improves Ember 3.0 is still going strong. Some minor patches here and there, so you're encouraged to take another glance at it and see what, if anything, is new! This is a continuation of a Player Submitted Substory/Plot by Pine, player of Ydris. Here's a link to it! All threads conducted on this topic count as Substory threads.	Can't Download a Clue "Please don't browse porn on these, sir" Jigoku-cho is home to many internet cafes of varying quality. Most of them are located in the Sutoku Alliance's territory. A new one has popped up recently, run by an executive's son who has too much money, not enough sense, and a dream. He rented out a garage, bought a few computers from the closest used electronics store, and decked it out with the cheapest desks and chairs money can buy. It's truly a paradise. Except it isn't. No one wants to come to this cafe and the owner can't figure out why! He's done everything right, hasn't he?! People like it enough to come in and try to steal everything that isn't nailed down! That has to count for something, doesn't it?! His father will pay you a considerable amount of money if you can help get his idiot son's business back on track, or at least stop the thieves from draining his wallet. Unfortunately, Daddy doesn't seem ready to give this idiot a true reality check and pull the funding, what a softy.
SUBSTORY #3	SUBSTORY #4
Drifter Grifter A man dressed all in black stumbles in on the edge of the city. He says he's come from the Wasteland and has important information about Iron Bear. He's dusty and disheveled enough that it's easy to believe him. All he asks in return is for some hospitality: a hot meal, a stiff drink, and maybe a few thousand yen to send him on his way. Once he has all of that, he goes to the bathroom, never to be seen again. If you ask around town about this man, you'll notice that everyone seems to be looking for the mysterious drifter in black. The Department of the Enma wants him taken in for scamming people, members from every faction want to shake him down for daring to pull this on their turf, and the people he's scammed want retribution. Team up, track him down, and deal with this grifter drifter.	Dogged the Bounty Hunters (plot-relevant) With a massive bounty on the line, every faction wants to claim that cash reward and to finally have business settled out in the Wastes. The factions have not made an alliance, and their goals conflict in places. Something every faction agrees upon, however, is that it will be easier for them to get theirs if they knock out any unaffiliated competition. For those independent forces out there gunning for the prize, they will be met with faction-allied obstacles. Everyone has been ordered by their respective leaders to sabotage the crap out of them. The Department of the Enma frames this as though it is a matter of public safety. The other clans? They're a bit more honest: this is about eliminating unnecessary variables. Each faction has their own methods for discouraging, muscling out, or otherwise getting rid of would-be bounty hunters. Whether through fights, bribes, or other seedy means, swear-ins are expected to keep the competition under their thumbs. Art by Samuel Silverman

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code bases by tricklet

Comments

[sincleavers]

Could someone interpret the eating contest as something like... "how spicy can you handle eating" rather than strictly how much? (Does that even make sense?!?)

Asking for, uh...a friend. Yeah.

[jigokumods]

If that's more fun for you, then sure!

[frogmarched]

Do the magpies like grasshoppers? Or would they prefer like, pastries or something, I assume that Magpies In Hell don't have to worry about eating the wrong thing?? Can you appease them through the delicious gift of food

[jigokumods]

You can certainly try! But they're fussy creatures, so it might not work, or they might demand a particularly obscure food.

[saintclaire]

Not sure if this should go to mods or to Ydris' player re: Ember, but just the same:

a) can characters create fake profiles with fake information? (ie, falsified name, photo, age?)
b) can they register multiple profiles? (ie, a real one and then a fake one?)

(Apologies if this has been asked before, I read through everything I could find but there's a lot of posts!)

[enterthe]

Heya! The mods messaged me to address this question, so here I am!

I believe that I've allowed fake/additional profiles purely on a case-by-case basis in the past. In an effort to be more consistent and fair, I'll say this is what applies to the current patch of EMBER (Sept);

a) yes, characters can create outright fake profiles, but Ydris will immediately purge any they deem as "harmful" to the app. They would consider harmful profiles to be; impersonating other Lost Souls, accounts which anonymously harass other users, or accounts that pretend to be any of the Faction Leaders/Authority Figures/Celestials (any NPC, basically). The social aspect of the application is only for Lost Souls, so anybody who isn't a lost soul is likely to get booted.

b) yes, characters can register multiple profiles, but see above on what would be disallowed. Ex. If a character just wants to make a secondary profile to keep a food blog on, Ydris isn't really going to mind that. Ydris also does not really have a way to confirm fake vs. truthful information. So, character lying on their profile about name/age/photo is likely going to slip by them. They don't even tell the truth about their own age on the app... "Immortal" is suspiciously inexact and they allow it for themself, hah.

I hope that helps! If you have a particular situation you want to run by me, absolutely feel free.

[saintclaire]

Hi Pine! Thanks so much for replying.

This sounds very workable to me! Kim (and Jimmy slippin) both make up characters for themselves in canon. They use them for a variety of hijinks, including sometimes to scam people, but we are currently thinking they'll just make a shared account to play around with and get a feel for people/socialize. (Kim may just use a fake name on her personal one because she probably wouldn't use it otherwise.)

When they do scam, they're generally pretty silly things like convincing someone to invest money in their company, or pay for an expensive bar tab. Obviously that's pretty difficult to do on Ember –– both of them are from 2004, so they aren't exactly app-savvy, and fake pictures wouldn't let them meet up with people in person easily. That should limit any potential damage, and pissing people off/upsetting people is something they'd actively be trying to avoid. They'd want you to willingly pull out the payment card, you know?

If this idea sounds fine by you, we're happy to let you know if they get into anything that veers towards harassment or anything that could reasonably be read as ill intent, and Ydris is more than welcome to shut it down at any point. If this goes beyond the scope of what you were originally planning, no worries there either, we can just play with multiple profiles that are a lot more subtle than a whole invented character :)

[enterthe]

I'll be real, Ydris was "taught programing, not ethics" and would have literally no clue what catfishing people is. Go forward and try a hand at scamming on EMBER! I'm sure their ToS is chalk full of fine print claiming absolutely no liability for such losses. They only really care if it could fall on their head or is actively ruining the environment of the social network. I don't think a couple characters could reasonable manage to do the latter.

I would say that EMBER accounts are probably locked to one per device, so if the two are grabbing burner phones to keep these accounts separate from their identities, that's probably a reasonable limit on how many accounts they can even afford to create and operate. I doubt they can afford to flood the place with hundreds of spam users like most social media struggles with...

SO, yeah, feel totally free to go around trying whatever schemes your characters would like to get up to. If you think anything might be excessive, feel free to reach out to me, or if you want Ydris to notice and reprimand them (or just... get in on the grift, if it's good enough), that might also be fun! They would just keep an eye out for outright identity theft and harassment to purge those sorts of accounts immediately.

[harimaya]

I know some questions were answered on the FAQ page about the Wasteland but just going to ask something kind of related to it here.

Since it sounds like a lot of the youkai are more monster than human and they become more violent and stuff... Hizen would wonder if this is natural or not. "Could something like the haniwa curse energy be in the Wasteland... Could there be worse curses out there… Should some of us be more careful so we don't change too..."

I think Hizen would do some general snooping around in shady places, bars, the arena, and ask around if/when people come to the arena to train/get weapons to prepare. He might ask Jiro if he's ever heard of anything too since he is an old soul.

Totally get it if you don't want to share answers about this or anything yet! But it's just something Hizen would wonder about in particular because he comes from a canon where... spirits can become corrupted, more powerful, and become less human, too. He considers himself strong but he knows his nature as a spirit makes him vulnerable to other things. u_u

[jigokumods]

Jiro will be his best bet to get info from, since he really likes Hizen (sorry, Hizen).

He mentions that he doesn't think there's any kind of cursed presence out there that drives people to violence, he just thinks that's what happens to people who are left with no choice but "survive" and little else. He says that having a network of people you care about, who care about you, the singular building block of "society" being bonds formed between individuals, is what keeps people from turning into those monsters you hear about out in the Wastes.

He gets a little sentimental about it, comparing it a bit to the way minerals of iron and carbon bind together, forming steel, becoming stronger and grander, whereas just a chunk of iron by itself in an environment like that is doomed to oxidize, to rust, and crumble away. He stays on this blacksmithing metaphor for well too long, of course, because it's Jiro, but you get it.

He thinks Hizen shouldn't worry; so long as he goes out there with people he trusts, people he knows will keep him "him", he should be fine. He's got friends here.

On an OOC level; yeah there's no force that drives them to becoming monster, it's just what however many centuries away from civilization in an environment that is extremely difficult to survive in has driven them too. There are exceptions to this, though, and it'll become relevant during the event.

[harimaya]

HIZEN WILL BREATHE A HEAVY SIGH OF RELIEF because he was worried for himself and some of his friends acceptable CR. 😭

He'll even listen to the whole blacksmithing metaphor like a good sword boy. Help out extra around the armory. Try to think of a way Jiro can meet his cooler sword friends u_u

Thank you, mods!

MINI-EVENT Questions!

[jigokumods]

Got questions about the Mini-Event! Post them here!

[roombamastermind]

Croix is working with the Kappa as part of maintenance on the city's utilities. Is it okay to say because of her work that she was very close to the explosion and caught up in the chaos?

[perfectdistance]

What do the Tamamo clan seals do? Do they work as a temporary shut off of any magical/supernatural powers? Or do they contain spells like fireballs and lightning?

Either way would it be possible for Nero to be gifted a few of them directly so he can manipulate them with his own magic?

[shikanoinheizou]

If an enterprising young detective who happens to be his canon's answer to Sherlock Holmes - with all the keen observational skills that implies - happened to be poking around where the bomb went off looking for clues after he helped some people get clear of the area, would he be able to find anything unusual?

1. Is anyone who was nearby at the time willing to talk? Did they see anything or anyone strange anywhere up to a few days before the bomb went off? Has anyone else been hanging around and/or asking questions?
2. If he happened to go looking around in the warehouse (if he was allowed, or able to sneak in), would he be able to find anything there or has it all been obliterated/burned up?
3. A third and kind of throw-away question as it might not be answerable just yet - is there any immediate noticable public reaction to Iron Bear's threat by any of the faction leaders?

[hundredpower]

Barnaby has canon training in bomb disposal. Would it be feasible for him to locate and defuse one or more of the bombs? Where would they be located, and would they be rigged in some way? Are they set to a (visible or otherwise) timer?

[bratherine]

So, we got lots of information on the main bomb, but is there anything worth knowing about the other bombs? Locations, anything like that?

[emet_sulk]

Is anyone from Enma basically allowed to, er, simply take one of the confiscated bounty hunter weapons for themselves? :X What sort of unusual weapons is the description referring to?

[baofeng]

The end of the posts mentions that “the factions are already beginning to sabotage each other”- is this a faction-leader-endorsed kind of sabotage, or more of individual members spontaneously fighting with each other? It seems like the former, and especially with the bombs being not from the Iron Bear, I’m wondering if ranked characters would have gotten instructions or plans for sabotage from their leaders.

[harimaya]

Hizen is here...

Since Hizen works at the armory under Jiro, could he feasibly have an idea of what was in the first warehouse and maybe have an idea/get a list of other warehouses in the area that have similar flammable/explosive supplies? You know, basically access to information to help him figure out what some of the most likely targets might be.

He would use this information to start directing other Shuten members to the places most likely to be hit so they can clear the area of civilians and help evacuate.

I'll probably have more questions but this is just the first one that immediately jumped out to me sdfghjkl

[jigokumods]

They will definitely feel it down there, likely some damage to the service tunnels near the explosion sight. The Kappa's first priority will be to check for bomb placements in Sutoku territory, however, and Croix is free to get in on that.

[jigokumods]

They basically do "all of the above". They're not especially powerful, and burn up once the stored mana is spent, but they can do *a lot*. Nero can definitely experiment with them.

[itstillhurt]

TWO(and a half?) QUESTIONS.

1: FOR THE BOMBINGS
-Standard investigation schtick. Would trying to figure out anything about who had access to the building and ferreting out the bombers that way lead anywhere, or is Azula just gonna get more "Fuck the pigs" from the Shuten she questions?

2: FOR THE WEAPONS
-Would it be at all reasonable or acceptable for Azula to take advantage of the, uh, sudden windfall of weaponry by, rather than distributing it, hoarding something of a stockpile of valuable weapons, and

2b: FOLLOWUP
-Would it be reasonable that she could ferret out a reasonably secure location at which to hide this stockpile safely

Y'know, for reason.

[jigokumods]

1. None of them saw anything that stands out as unusual, at least not that they're able to recall in their current haze.

2. Whoever set this bomb knew what they were doing; very little evidence is left behind, and the chemical aspect is tainted by any munitions nearby that exploded during the initial fire. If Department fire crew found the remains of the device, they're not sharing it with anyone outside the Department.

3. We'll get to this one, for sure, for now most people barely seem to know what he's babbling on about.

[eyediot]

I am legally required by law to ask: will Jon's regained ability help at all with either 1. finding the other bombs or 2. helping find any civilians trapped anywhere?