Contingency plan Storyline

[Trylon]

So, while the other thread is busy gathering ideas for the technical side of the contigency plan, this might be a good place to discuss the storyline part.
Essentially the storyline is the biggest part of the Contingency Plan, so it deserves it's own thread
I'll codename the new engine and game that the contingency plan implies "D'Nay" for now. (meaning (EDIT) "root again")

On to the essentials...
I think that in the spirit of Uru, it's best to continue the storyline where Cyan (will have) left off.
The startup storyline should echo the words "Destruction has come, find a way, make a home!".

I was thinking that the situation could be made similar to what happened in the Book of D'Ni - where Atrus and the D'Ni survivors decided to rebuild in a new Age, instead of the old ruins of D'Ni.
With the destruction of the cavern, Writers were forced to write other ages to flee to. These will be the core of the new plan.

Perhaps the startup/introductory storyline could focus on following the efforts needed to bring various groups/individuals that have fled to their own ages, together into a larger more collaborative Age (I'll codename that Age "Root" for now). This would allow for interesting subplots handling communications between the Ages.

Some questions that this raises:
- How was the Cavern "destroyed"? Simply inaccessible due to occupation by Bagro Nekhisahl? Or more real?
- What happened to Relto? Since we can't bring Relto into D'Nay, we need an acceptable explanation, and a substitute.
- What will Root look like? A cavern, like D'Ni, or a large island/Continent? Perhaps it'll be the Age that Ahra Pahts resides in...? Or maybe a large fertile valley within an Ice Cavern or Snow Desert (Shangri La anyone )
- What contact will be maintained with Earth? I'd love to have certain area's be locations on Earth IC'ly...
- Which limits will the ages and books have? I'm all for restoring the old linking rules again... I think Yeesha went way too far with her fancy spiral links. But how about panic/linking, Relto substitute in that case?

[Owehn]

We probably all remember Dr. Watson's speech, where he said:

Yeesha has already been to hundreds of Ages, looking for something, anything, that might help to end the Bahro conflict, or, at the very least, help to protect us from it in case there comes a time when the "good" Bahro are no longer able to. As time passes, it grows increasingly unlikely that anything is going to be found in an Age the D'ni have or had access to. And so, we are going to need new Ages at some point.

Perhaps we should begin by claiming that some writers fled the cavern during "Exodus", as the bahro began invading? They could have set up a haven in one of their new Ages, filled with raw materials for the Art. They'd be able to write new Ages, with the immediate goal of understanding the Art better, and with the ultimate goal of finding a way to shield Earth and other Ages from bahro attacks.

We'd need some IC reasons for:
- Why we no longer have Relto books (maybe some early accident rendered them permanently ineffective upon linking to the haven Age? maybe we discarded them intentionally - see below)
- Why we're not visiting the cavern or any of the d'ni Ages (perhaps this is a safety measure: if the bahro come in full force, they'd start in the cavern and we might have time to seal ourselves off from Earth)

Anyway, this should be a reasonable way of avoiding Cyan's toes: no matter what Cyan does in d'ni, we couldn't have contradicted it since we'd be confined to completely separate Ages. And if there are events in the Cavern, news of it can reach us in the haven.

[Tweek]

Well with Ter'ni it started off as an Age that was being worked on, and eventually people moved there and now it's its own little place.

Cavern doesn't (and can't unless Cyan states which is most unlikely) have to be destroyed.

Not sure how the lack of Relto books would be explained...maybe the group was anti yeesha?

[Owehn]

I agree; we shouldn't assume any events that don't have an explicit grounding in common Uru knowledge.

How about this refinement of my idea: we're trying to set up a haven from the bahro. We figure that if the bahro knew where we were, they'd be able to link there, so our only hope is to keep our location a secret. This means in particular it's a bad idea to have any linking books in locations the bahro are known to have frequented, since they would be likely to look for us there if they ever made it back to the cavern. In particular, we can't have linking books from Relto to our new Ages, since our Reltos are known to have been visited. Also, we theorize that if a bahro ever wanders into a link-in point, it may be able to sense that it has done so, and get a lock on the location of the book that links there. This means that we can't have any linking books to d'ni or any of the d'ni Ages, such as Relto. (An exception might be some surface location on Earth that is unlikely for the bahro to trouble themselves to go to, i.e. a place completely unconnected to d'ni, through which we can remain in contact with Earth.)

[BladeLakem]

Well, it has been suggested in many quarters that during the Big Scream that divided D'mala from Live, that anyone anywhere who was holding a Relto book got picked up by the Bahro. So the Relto book makes a very good homign devcie of sorts. Additionally, the bad Bahro are following Yeesha now through the Ages. So use of a Relto book could attract attention, as they are artifacts she created. So it may be common wisdom to avoid Relto books because the Bahro might find you if you use one

As for no Bahro on the surface, well, as far as we know they almost never go there. Humanity isn't on their radar more than any other Age-culture. It's the D'ni they are after. Thus the Writers are maintaining a low profile. In the meantime, they are working on reconstructing the Art, possibly avoiding the cultural biases of the D'ni in the process (allowing room for linking to work slightly differently if needed - panic linking is just too useful, for example).

A 'root' age would be interesting. Of course, Ahra Pahts would be an excellent choice as well.

I think that story can use the 'instancing' concept to good effect, too. If there are multiple shards or environments, instancing makes a lot of sense. Even story itself can be instanced, as is normal for tabletop RPGs.

BTW, D'nay would more likely mean 're-root' rather than 'new root'. The ni in D'ni is the part referring to 'new'. However, the implication is still appropriate, I think.

[andylegate]

Just another idea to throw on the pile here:

As we know, Yeesha fled the cavern leading the Bahro away. But of course we don't know for how long, etc. We were also told several times over that NO Age would ever be safe from the Bahro. So, writing Ages to flee from the Bahro does not really make sense, in that the Bahro would always be able to find us.

However, here is another idea, that looks more at the Human side of it:

The DRC has left the Cavern, and the Ages that we were able to explore. The Fledgling Guilds are just starting, but have been learning much, but were of course left to our own devices.
The DRC members that did not completely abandon the Cavern said that they were going to search for more funding.

Now, we all know, that even with no funding, the majority of explorers would never leave the cavern simply because the DRC was unable to return with funding. Even with the threat of some Bahro being bad, explorers stubbernly refused to leave.

What if that threat was something more real and more believable? Something that would just about guarantee that any explorer would be willing to not only flee the Cavern, but possibly go into hiding in new Ages.

How about Government Invasion of the Caverns? (this would only work if OOC, Cyan shuts Uru down completely. And for online purposes we can't access Uru and it's Ages).

Back story would be something like, oh I don't know, Marie and Laxman approaching people and some people of the goverment get wind of the Cavern and this fantastic ability to link to parallel universes (how this has been kept secret from the government or world for that mater, until now is beyond me, as many explorers as you have, something would have leaked well before now, and it doesn't take much imagination to figure out how ANY government would react to power of that nature).

Long story short, word gets back to us that they are coming, and anyone found in the Cavern and Ages will more than likely be "detained".......and disappear into a black hole (figuratively speaking, any State that aquired power like this would want to keep it so secret, it would not be funny).
In just enough time, people are warned, and we begin mass exodous of the Cavern and Ages, just about the same time that Tanks and APC's show up on the horizon at the Cleft. Time to go. All books that could be destroyed were, with everyone linking to, let's say, Eder Gira, with the linking book to the New Age (Root) held over the lava flow when the last person uses it.

Rather dark, but hey, so was a Gas killing off all the D'ni! hehehe.

P.S. D'Nay is okay with me......I just thank god that Trylon didn't write "Duck-Neigh"..........

[BladeLakem]

It might work - the explorers head off into the Ages, taking the linking books with them. The problem is that it cuts off Earth from the explorers. Maybe if thet explorers got advance warning from the DRC so none of them were there when the MiBs arrived, they'd be able to remain anonymous... *shrug*

[Chacal]

Some thoughts, concepts instead of a story:

- I think we should have a "home Age", much like the Cavern is for Uru. This would be the starting point for further explorations. It would replace both the City and the neighborhood. Community Hall, greeters, etc would be there.
- A linking book to this Age would be on the surface. This explains how we can go there and how new explorers can join from Earth.
- Focus should be on multi-player. In Uru, our books link to a private instance that can be shared if desired. Books in D'Nay should link to public instances unless privacy is desired (if you want to solve a puzzle on your own and save its state).
- Maybe we could dispense with the entire Yeesha/Bahro idea altogether? Even though it is central to Uru, I always found it a bit lame, an awkward attempt at injecting some mysticism and drama into the game. I'd rather have "pure D'ni". The Art of Writing is a science, not magic.
- Relto book could link back to a personal Age, or even to a room in the "Home Age". This would help meeting other people, because I don't expect there will be hundreds of players at a time.
- There shouldn't be a centrally ran story. The purpose of the game is to provide multi-player fan Ages. The GoW's role is to run a server, add Ages and help write Ages, The GoM inspects and approves them for inclusion. There is NO DRC or similar decisional body.

[BladeLakem]

I don't think there needs to be a central story or authority. But if the intention is that D'nay attaches to the Uru continuity, there has to be an IC concept of getting to here from there. The rest can be faked.

Of course, if there are separate shards, then it's a moot point. People will come up with their own ideas for story.

[Owehn]

Yeah, I don't think there should be a central storyline either, but instead a 'there-to-here' premise connecting it to Uru. Also, I think several shards would be a good idea. Individuals can apply to the different shards to get their Ages uploaded, or start their own shards if they want - that saves there from being a central and universal authority.

Giant disclaimer: The following is my wish list for the contingency (Plan C) setting; I have no expectation of it ever being fulfilled. That said, here's my ideal system of Age access:

- There is a nexus-like database of all the Ages each person has authorization to visit. Every Age has at least one link-in point in the database.
- For each link Age, authorizations come in three flavors: total, shared, and partial. Anyone at any time can lower their own authorization level (with a few exceptions, see below). Those with total authorization can change anyone else's authorization (except to remove someone else's total authorization). Those with shared authorization can give anyone else partial or shared authorization, or remove partial authorization from someone they've given it to. Those with partial authorization have no control over anyone else's authorization.
- Everyone has a link to a personal area, for which they will always have total authorization. Anyone who has sole access to a link has total authorization for it. Everyone also has a permanent (shared) authorization for links to certain public areas.
- When someone submits an Age to a shard, they automatically have total authorization to all link-in points.

I think that's a reasonable system. I've explored it a few times and I don't think it has any obvious flaws, but then again it's rather late. Ideally, the authorization system would mesh with other sorts of user groups, and "smart usergroups" (I'm thinking of iTunes' "smart playlists") would be possible, e.g. everyone in the Guild of Sculptors always has total access to the Sculpture Showcase Age. In fact, I think the same sorts of "authorization" would work well for membership in various usergroups: total/shared/partial authorization corresponds to founder/member/guest membership.

Here's what I'd like to be in each person's personal area:
- A small living space with some customizable decorations. (Bulletin boards with mutable writing, posters for which people can upload images, etc.)
- A link to the nexus-like database Age and a shelf of a few favorite books.
- A terminal for accessing mail and keeping track of permissions. Ideally, this would be also accessible from out of game.

I'd prefer it personal areas were kept rather simple, because I'd really like for them all to be part of the same Age (which can be expanded as necessary). Bigger customization would be saved for user-created Ages.

Now, my personal taste would be for all these rules to be kept:
- All linking is achieved by use of linking books or other device. (Sorry, but I don't really like Shell 111's punishment.)
- Every linking book links to the same place for every user. (Think of the Er'cana silo, as opposed to Gira/Kemo)
- Instancing is kept to a minimum, and is always explained as a duplicate descriptive book. (Total authorization to a new instance is always obtained from the original author of an Age.)
Of course, those three rules might vary from one shard to the next, as opposed to being part of the infrastructure.