June 2017 Plotting Post

[undergroundmods]

June 2017
Welcome to your June plotting post! You can make use of the information here to plot what your character will be doing in the next month. June will see the results of the Presidential election, with the city's political landscape adjusting to a new leader.

OOCly, we've got a test drive meme coming up towards the end of the month. Check out the calendar for a quick summary of when things are happening. You can also check the game timeline to see what has happened in the game so far.

Factions
This month all eyes will be on the Night Council as it elects its first new President in over twenty years. On 2nd June, Cesare Borgia is declared the new President. Meanwhile, the charges against ex-President Sylvia Redbright will be dropped on condition that she doesn't stand again for office, following her shock resignation in the wake of the Millicent Scandal.

Despite gaining herself a seat on the Night Council, it will soon become clear that Samantha Okeke, the Mother of Witches, will not get things all her own way as pressure mounts for the Night Council to u-turn on its stance regarding summoning magic. Summoning magic had been officially declared not dark magic (and therefore permitted) by the Night Council back in March, but after an outcry from several factions regarding Circle Daybreak's experimenting on fae at the Magical Innovation Centre, this month the Night Council will vote to reinstate the ban.

The news will be a further blow for Circle Daybreak following a surprise attack on Richmond by the Hillingdon Clan who now occupy the territory. The Clan have shut down the Magical Innovation Centre and now face a legal battle with Circle Daybreak over ownership of the building. It was also during the attack that several East End Pack werewolves openly rebelled and chose to side with the Hillingdon Clan rather than the witches they were meant to be allying with, thus putting a final end to the alliance between them. Tempers in the East End Pack are running hot, and around mid-month their alpha Katherine Moore will be forced to defend her position against several challengers in the pack.

Meanwhile, the Islington Nest have quietly – or perhaps not so quietly – been amassing further power, having gained the territory of Lambeth in their ongoing feud with Circle Daybreak and with a vampire now elected to the highest supernatural office in the land. Small wonder, then, that there are some watching the Nest with a very cautious eye. Their leader Jean-Claude may seem relatively reasonable for a vampire, but where once London was very much in the hands of the witches, the balance of power is shifting towards the vampires. This has not gone unnoticed either by the Redbright Institute or the East End Pack, and there are likely to be some fae feeling rather uneasy about it too.

As midsummer approaches and the Seelie reach the height of their power, they will celebrate by enacting their own small show of revenge upon the witches who dared to steal their freedom. Despite the cages in the Magical Innovation Centre now being empty, there are still a number of fae who serve Circle Daybreak. Whether or not the renewed ban on summoning magic will help to reduce tensions remains to be seen.

Territories
In a severe blow for Circle Daybreak, it lost two territories in the past month: Lambeth to the Islington Nest and Richmond to the Hillingdon Clan. The Islington Nest remains the most powerful faction in the city with eight territories. See the Territories page for more information.

If your faction would like to claim a new territory, please comment to the appropriate thread. Players will then have three days from the date and time of the initial claim to sign up for the conflict. Anyone can sign up, but please only volunteer your character if they are a member of a faction involved in the conflict or they have IC reasons to actively help out. Please do not volunteer if you won't be able to participate in the plot.

If the outcome of the conflict is not already guaranteed, I will then look at the sign-ups list to calculate which faction will emerge victorious. It is up to players to plan and play out the actual conflict itself. If you comment to claim a territory, then you should also take the lead in planning and organizing it.

Minions
The following lucky minions will be promoted this month:

Ban Sidhe | Ghost, Unseelie Court | Level 1
‣ Even in death the court can't get rid of her.

These minions will decide to leave town this month:

Thom Evans | Vampire, Islington Nest | Level 2
‣ An American, Thom came to London to settle a business debt and fell into a rough way with a local vampire. Unable to face his family after that, Thom settled in for the long haul as the token London vampire cowboy.

Terrence Richards | Vampire, Islington Nest | Level 2
‣ A smart-thinking vampire who makes a living working night shifts on various security details. The fact that they call it the graveyard shift gives him no end of amusement.

And these less fortunate minions will sadly die this month:

Jerry Hickinbottom | Human, Hillingdon Clan | Level 1
‣ A trained nurse who moonlights as occasional healer for clan members.

Lasha Goodman | Human, Hillingdon Clan | Level 1
‣ A singer in a smokey room, lots of wine and cheap perfume. For a smile you can sit your butt right there and listen. Anything else'll cost ya.

Diego Mendoza | Vampire, Islington Nest | Level 2
‣ An extremely lazy vampire who spends most of his time sleeping the day away. He's the subject of a lot of mockery, but doesn't seem to care.

Fionbharr | Fae, Unseelie Court | Level 1
‣ An extremely Irish fae who will fight you if you call him a leprechaun.

Factions may decide how and when their minions die, leave town or receive a promotion. Feel free to work these developments into any of this month's plots.

Events

1st June – PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. It's election day! From 7am to 10pm, the vote will be open to choose the new President of the Night Council. Polling stations will be set up in Circle Daybreak, Redbright Institute, East End Pack and Night Council territories so that members of these factions can cast their vote. (Note that these are the only factions that get a vote.) Their choice is clear: it's either going to be Cesare Borgia or Jean-Claude, both members of the Islington Nest. With the Islington Nest not participating in this election, there's plenty of speculation over which candidate the other factions will prefer. Will it be the leader of a rival faction? Or a lord whose name carries its own notoriety in human history?

2nd June – PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RESULTS. The result will be officially announced at the Night Council HQ, as well as being broadcast online by the supernatural media. After the announcement, a ceremony will then take place to swear in the new President. OOCly, the result will be announced as soon as activity has been confirmed.

9th June – FULL MOON. Werewolves, it's that time of the month! Will you chain yourself up or spend the night in a cage? Roam wild in the London parks? Or perhaps find a witch to make you a wolfsbane potion. Whatever you choose, better be prepared.

18th June – FATHER'S DAY. A day of appreciation for fathers everywhere. It's also around this time that some of the tensions in the East End Pack will bubble to the surface, resulting in Katherine having to do a throw-down on some of the male werewolves who fancy themselves as the new alpha.

21st June – LITHA. It's midsummer, the longest day of the year, and a time of celebration for witches, who perform rites and enchantments to draw their power from the sun. On Midsummer's Eve, it is traditional to light a bonfire and stay up until dawn. The rising sun is considered to be a potent source of magic. Midsummer is also a time of feasting for the Seelie Court and this time around they fancy a taste of revenge. During the Litha feast, the Seelie will capture young witches to become pets of the Seelie king and queen.

Plots
The following prompts are up for grabs this month:

1) Missing persons alert: a pair of twin witches have been reported missing. They're only fifteen years old and their parents are going frantic with worry. Reward: £250 and a spell of your choosing
2) A faery fort appears in a shapeshifter's backyard and thus begins a war of attrition... or pest control.
3) You discover a mysterious egg that appears to give off a magical aura. Problem is, someone else is after it and they're not afraid to use violence to get what they want. – Claimed by Autumn
4) You (and possibly others) find yourselves trapped in a time loop, forced to relive the same day over and over again until the spell is broken. – Claimed by Mai

About plots and events
• You may claim one plot prompt per month.
• You can also run your own plots based on the events listed above, or create your own.
• If you claim a plot, then you also volunteer to take the lead OOCly i.e. planning and organizing with other players, deciding on the outcome, setting a timeline etc.
• Once you have claimed a plot, you should introduce it ICly within the next month.
• Plots may not be entirely handwaved. You may handwave some of the plot, but you should play out at least part of it.
• Some plots will require NPCs as well as player characters to fill different roles. Please feel free to make up and play the NPCs yourselves.
• Plots are generally open-ended enough that you can make them big or small. It is up to the player who claims the plot to decide how they would like to handle it. You may want to do open sign-ups for your plot and specify whether there is a limit on how many characters can participate.
• Plots can also be self-contained or form part of an ongoing storyline. Again, it is your choice on how you would like to handle it.
• Please feel free to integrate plots and events or join plots up where appropriate. For example, if you claim a plot that involves a murder, why not choose an event during which the murder could happen? As long as the mod and other players are aware of your plans, I'm happy to accommodate.
• Do not ask the mod to explain what the plot is and what your character should do or discover. That is up to you. These plot ideas are just that, ideas, and it is up to you to run with them and decide how and why these events are happening, what your characters are going to do about it, and what the consequences will be.
• You may ask the mod questions pertaining to game mythology, to check that what you are planning to do makes sense within the game world.
• This list is not meant to be limiting in any way! Player plots are also very welcome.
• If you have an idea for a player plot, please feel free to comment here and see if there is any interest. Run it by the mod first if you're unsure of anything.

Comments

LET'S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD

[brightwitch]

Right guys, we've got some plotting to do! As you know, the Seelie/Unseelie Court won last month's faction reward and voted for the rule on summoning magic to be overturned i.e. the Night Council are going to vote to ban summoning magic again. Now we need to figure out how to make that happen.

I have spoken to the two players who have characters on the Night Council, and we're looking at two potential options:

Option 1: Yasmine, Cooper and Cesare vote to ban summoning magic, and Samantha and Vrinak vote against.
Option 2: Yasmine, Cooper and Vrinak vote to ban summoning magic, and Samantha and Cesare vote against.

In both scenarios, Cooper is for the proposal. However, he will need some IC persuading (as per this comment). Cesare is more on the fence, so I will leave it to you guys to discuss and decide which way you want to go. If you choose option 2, Vrinak will need serious persuading (possibly of the blackmail or bribery kind).

In other news, last month the Hillingdon Clan took over Richmond and occupied the Magical Innovation Centre. Samantha is furious about this. Even if she can't have the territory, she wants the Centre back. She will throw a shitstorm of lawyers at Hillingdon to get her own way. So my question for Hillingdon is: what are you going to do with the building? Trash it? Burn it down? Any of these could result in legal action, of the mundane variety.

I think those are the two main things to sort out! If anyone wants an NPC, just shout! Sylvia's pretty quiet this month because she's busy being investigated by the Night Council and trying to come out of it squeaky clean. There are a number of factions that could do with making new allies though. Who do the werewolves want to make friends with? Who should Redbright support? Let's discuss ideas!

team werewoof

[ghoulaid]

yall come here lets have some chats about where to take the pack from here. personally i can see us going 3 ways

1. attempt to ally with fae (may be unlikely since i'm sure they're still mad, this makes the pack look more wishy-washy/backstabby, and the fae probably have no need for them anymore if summoning magic is being banned)
2. attempt to ally with hillingdon? (they hate vampires, wolves hate vampires, and they now have work experience together! BUT, they also hunt wolves sometimes and that is a sad)
3. pack takes some me-time again because it is an independent group that don't need no man (it's possible they're stable enough and can take advantage of all these distractions. can maybe snag some territories by themselves)

what do you all think about the current game climate and where would you like to see things go? it doesn't have to be similar to the above 3 at all, let's just throw some ideas around at each other

[injectablefame]

Party is for 2 as long as they can come to an agreement about woofhunts. 1 also wouldn't make him too mad. He likes Hillingdon and the Fae generally.

Re: team werewoof

[thelastjoy]

Girl would throw such a fit over 2. (Allying with hunters? Blasphemy!) Obviously I love that idea, but 3 + them going for some new territory is also pretty interesting.

[ghoulaid]

oh no. OH NO... this might be a wild ride for her

Re: team werewoof

[brightwitch]

No possibility of allying with Redbright Institute? Sylvia may not be a big fan of werewolves but right now she's more concerned about the Islington Nest.

Re: team werewoof

[ghoulaid]

actually i was thinking about that earlier today too! i think it would be pretty interesting, i just wasn't sure what east end could offer them! redbright has always seemed pretty steady and not really needing support BUT still! could sylvia be convinced to ally with just the promise of making trouble for islington?

Re: team werewoof

[brightwitch]

What Sylvia wants is a way to manage the power of the vampires, because in her view they have too much. She would want a concerted effort to reduce that power, and one good way of doing it would be to support East End taking territory from Islington. So yes, that would be enough, but it needs to translate into real action and not just scribbling rude messages in Islington territory.

Re: team werewoof

[ghoulaid]

pupdate: in addition to pitching an alliance with redbright, some of the doggies will have been talking to hillingdon and seeing how they feel about an alliance as well. we've chatted on plurk about it (because doing an official sit-down log would involve like 5 people yikes) and have come up with this:

- hillingdon is open to an alliance as long as they are not brought in to matters involving the islington nest. they want to be left out of anything that's nest vs pack, and will not take an official stand for either side. so, in essence, this would be an anti-daybreak alliance, or anti-whoever in the future if this is longstanding
- hillingdon is/will be aware of east end's alliance with redbright and has no problem with it, as hillingdon and redbright are on decent terms with each other
- the alliance can be temporary (until the samantha situation is taken care of) or long term, it's ultimately up to katherine

ghoul will be presenting this info to katherine (which can be logged if you want, i'm totally up for it if you are) around the same time as laura's talks with redbright. if katherine would like to talk one on one with hillingdon herself, daryl will be available

so there we go! we also did a wolfpack plurk and everyone is cool with trying out both alliances, but if we have to pick one, redbright was the most popular option iirc. so katherine has her choice of either two or one!

Re: team werewoof

[brightwitch]

Katherine's number one goal is to fight the vampires. So if Hillingdon aren't interested in fighting vampires, their alliance is automatically less interesting to her. That said, she won't turn down an agreement from Hillingdon not to intervene in any nest vs pack dispute if that will stop them from potentially allying with Islington. But the most she'll offer for that is not to intervene in any Hillingdon vs Daybreak fight. And generally for them to avoid opposing each other.

For that reason, Redbright will be her first pick if she can get a commitment to fight the vampires (Laura needs to specifically ask for this), but she won't be against some sort of looser arrangement with Hillingdon.

I am up for threading any/all of this! Just point me to a thread where you want Katherine and I'll hop on it.

Re: team werewoof

[cabins]

Yo, option 2 or Redbright. Why not both? They need friends, and vampires suck.

Re: team werewoof

[ghoulaid]

i love the idea of trying both lol... would laura want to talk to one of those options and pitch the idea to them?

Re: team werewoof

[cabins]

Sure!

fae rule witches drool

[falsify]

So, the vote! Seeing as Eames valiantly saved Cooper's life, he's willing to leverage that to get his vote. Otherwise I'm happy with whichever option other people prefer - Eames is digging up dirt on Cesare as we speak and he could leverage that, or somebody could bribe Vrinak. Whatever the most popular option is.

He's also willing to donate funds to Hillingdon for a crack team of lawyers to defend them against Samantha, but I think the law might be pretty cut-and-dry on this.

Re: fae rule witches drool

[longterm]

Cesare is kinda Team Samantha right now, so he's probably going to vote with her either way, I think?

However I am totally here for dirt digging, so if you'd like, Eames can try to threaten Cesare with leaking information and Cesare can be all "go ahead bitch"? Or we can save that sort of thing for later plots. :)

Re: fae rule witches drool

[falsify]

rude

I think it'd be nice to save for a later plot if he's voting with Samantha regardless; whether or not it works in Eames' favour I think it'd be nice to be able to make it its own thing rather than incidental to another plot, you know?

Re: fae rule witches drool

[longterm]

Absolutely! Sounds good to me! :)

Re: fae rule witches drool

[brightwitch]

If there's nothing that will convince Cesare to vote for the motion, it looks like we'll be going for option 2! So that means getting Vrinak to play ball.

My suggestion here would be to handwave any threats/discussions/negotiations with the NPCs so you guys can focus on IC interactions with the player characters, but if you feel an itch to play something with an NPC, let me know!

For the NPCs, it will go down like this:

• Samantha obviously will never vote for this motion no matter what. It's probably pointless to ask her and I don't imagine that any fae would bother although it might be funny to try.
• Yasmine's game in all this has always been to undermine the witches at every turn. (Her master plan is working.) She'll be fairly easy to convince although it would need to be pitched to her in terms of working for peace and co-operation because she wants to look good and not like she only ever votes for her own gain.
• Vrinak is the tough nut to crack. Let me tell you a story about Vrinak. Samantha already has him by the balls thanks to some incriminating video footage of Vrinak and a succubus. This is what caused Vrinak to drop out of the leadership race and although he agrees with Samantha on policy, it also means he's on an extra short leash. As you can imagine, he's less enthused about Samantha since being blackmailed to drop out of the race in favour of a vampire, but that doesn't mean he's suddenly going to like fae. Getting him to comply would require either getting rid of the blackmail footage, using it against him, or a bribe generous enough to make him risk going against the party line e.g. giving up a Seelie/Unseelie territory to Circle Daybreak.

If you do want to go down the discovering the blackmail route, we can work that out, but that is an explosive piece of information and I don't want this house of cards to come tumbling down just yet so it would have to be something that the Seelie/Unseelie don't immediately spill to the world. If they keep their cards close to their chest for now, they could get what they want and potentially use it against Samantha in the future.

Thoughts?

Re: fae rule witches drool

[falsify]

Oh boy

Eames would be more than happy to find some blackmail material. If possible even convince Vrinak that they did him a solid and deleted it, but actually keeping it for a later date because Vrinak is a jerk

Re: fae rule witches drool

[brightwitch]

All right! So I can think of two ways for this to happen. One is if Eames asks around the Court in general for dirt on Vrinak and the succubus comes forward with her story. Then he'd have to locate the footage and delete it (or pretend to delete it). It would probably be on a flash drive in Samantha's house, which naturally is well-protected but not impossible to break into.

The alternative is breaking into Samantha's house in an effort to find dirt on her and then accidentally coming across the flash drive.

If we did a break-in plot, I could throw Mogget at you to catch the intruder and chase them out! How about it?

[specifiercity]

it's all up to daryl what they do with the centre but is any of this lawyer business something that could be assuaged with a few bribes? arthur has over 20 points saved up and this seems a worthy enough cause if it's possible!

[brightwitch]

That kind of depends on what happens to the building, but if it does get written off then a very generous bribe might just persuade Samantha to cut her losses and settle out of court without pressing criminal charges. And when I say very generous, I mean something like a) a shitton of money (millions, not thousands); b) giving up Richmond back to Circle Daybreak; c) a binding promise that Hillingdon will support Circle Daybreak in its efforts to create a more peaceful community which in practice means pushing back Seelie/Unseelie Court and Islington Nest; d) handing over Daryl's head on a platter (that one probably isn't a viable option). Or if you have a suggestion of an alternative offer that might be attractive, let me know!

[falsify]

I'll get my knife 🍛🙀

[dirtyredneck]

Daryl's fine with the centre being re-opened AS LONG AS daybreak agrees to follow Hillingdon's rules wrt treatment of other species. which means no experimenting on fae or any of the fae-based research they were doing in there that Hillingdon took a stance against prior to the territory claim.

[bellbound]

Since summoning magic is going to be banned again, they won't be able to do that anyway. Also, Samantha will expect Hillingdon to pay damages.

How about they negotiate an arrangement towards the end of the month?