taxonooc | Entries tagged with system glitch

As of this post, Taxonians can consider that winter has gasped its last, thanks to the heroic efforts of various citizens in defeating the twin threats of the witch and her ice crystal! --er, at the time of this posting, these threats have not yet been DEFEATED per se, but, well, you're heroes. It's what y'all do. ;)

This is in no means putting a stop to backtagging on that post (or hell, even tagging on it period, it's not too late!), just the OOC official 'glitch-be-wrapped' thing. ~~nine days after the original plan~~

Taxon will now enter spring-- a muddy, wet, riotously green spring, as all that meltwater floods the city parks, lawns, and sewers.

As always, we welcome feedback on the glitch-plot. Of our own volition, we're aware the timing/coordination left a little something to be desired at the end, but please feel free to elaborate on any specific problems you noticed or any suggestions you'd like to give. Hope y'all had fun with it anyway!

taxonmods

Winter is ~~Coming~~ HERE

As promised, more info on Taxsicle: the Frozen Edition!

Currently, Adventure Zone looks something like this. Gone are the castles and forests and such. From the bridge, the ground rises through snowed-over fields, then hills, then into the solitary standing peak of the Icy Mountain. It is snowing on the north side of the bridge, not heavily, but definitely snowing.

Meanwhile, in Taxon itself, the weather is still holding at whatever the front-page widget lists (as of this typing, that would be 23 F, mostly cloudy).

Starting March 7th, the snow in Taxon itself will start falling steadily. There'll be a foot of snow in the first day. The Taxonian Extra children no doubt rejoice, as school is cancelled! March 8 will feature children sledding down Taxon hills, Taxon snowplows clearing the streets, et cetera.

But the snow doesn't stop....

By March 10th Taxon stores and businesses will be closed and the snowplows will have given up. There'll be some four feet of snow on the ground. Trams will still run sporadically but even those will suspend service on the 11th.

On the 12th water mains will start bursting (up to individual players if their characters' homes lose water, power, or anything else).

The temperatures will be well below freezing. Getting around town will be a pain in the ass for ordinary humans. To make things worse, the deep layers of snow seem to interfere some with map functions-- if you're looking for a friend trapped in a drift, better have a back-up plan when the map won't show you their location...

Through all of this, a chill wind will be blowing from the direction of the bridge and the icy mountain beyond. If you step out into the snow... if you hold your breath, so as not to freeze the lining of your throat... if you close your eyes and you listen.... you can hear the wind bringing you the sounds of distant laughter and eerie howling.

***

Some picture spam to get you in a bitterly cold sort of mood.

***

“They call it 'the whispering of the stars.' Listen," he said, raising a finger for silence. I could still hear the tinkling and craned my neck to see what it was. Zhensky laughed. "No, here. Look." He formed his mouth into a wide O and exhaled slowly. As he did, I saw the cloud of breath fall in droplets to the ground. That was the sound I heard: our breath falling. "It's a Yakut expression. It means a period of weather so cold that your breath falls frozen to the ground before it can dissipate. The Yakuts say that you should never tell secrets outside during the whispering of the stars, because the words themselves freeze, and in the spring thaw anyone who walks past that spot will be able to hear them.”

-Jon Fasman, The Geographer's Library

"Two weather observers at the Snag airport in the Yukon of Canada experienced -81.4°F on February 3, 1947, and reported:

'We threw a dish of water high into the air, just to see what would happen. Before it hit the ground, it made a hissing noise, froze, and feel as tiny round pellets the size of wheat kernels. Spit also froze before hitting the ground. Ice became so hard the axe rebounded from it. At such temperatures, metal snapped like ice; wood became petrified; and rubber was just like cement. The dogs' leather harness couldn't bend or it would break...It was unique to see a vapor trail several yards long pursuing one as he moved about outside. Becoming lost was of no concern. As an observer walked along the runway each breath remained as a tiny motionless mist behind him at head level. These patches of human breath fog remained in the still air for three or four minutes before fading away. One observer even found such a trail still marking his path when he returned along the same path 15 minutes later'."

-Extreme Weather: A Guide and Record Book

***

Questions or plotting? Ask 'em! Or do your plotting back over in the SOTT. All is good!

taxonmods

Hey kids! Dien here. February's over, and March is roaring in. AND NOW I SHALL FIRE BULLET-POINTS AT YOU ALL.

THE ARMOR-PIERCING BULLET POINTS

• Brrr.... Taxon, the weather's about to take a turn for the worse. We hope you have your thermals handy. See MARCH GLITCH, down below.

• Adventure Zone for March will tie into the Glitch, so... yes, see below. That said, you can offer suggestions/make requests for glitches and future Adventure Zones over here.

• Reminding everyone to fill out your character profiles, as per here. Many of you have already done so, and thank you for that! We will start editing the Taken list soon to include a link for the profiles. Even if all you have right now is a placeholder post, give us your link to that so we can put that link into 'Taken'.

• Reminding everyone to TAG YOUR POSTS. Older players are as guilty of this as newer ones! At the moment we've basically chucked a formalized AC out the window, but that's not to say it might never come back, so please stay in the habit of using those tags. Even aside from AC, it's a useful way for us mods to track down where your characters are and what they are doing... which is useful to us when we start stalking you with the hamsters, or dropping meta-plot hints for your characters.

• The new FAQ (basic FAQ and expanded FAQ) is up and implemented. We'll try and weed out references and links to the older FAQ, but the community's FAQ links should link to the new ones now. Please take the time when you can to familiarize yourself with the changes-- a lot of things are the same, but a lot of things have changed slightly. If you have any questions, ask away.

• As a footnote to the new FAQ that deserves its own mention, you have the option to submit your own Extras to be specific NPCs. Check that out over here at the Extras entry.

• As a footnote to the footnote, the Sheriff is being toned back doooown to be a very background character, and less of a nerfer. He may still get busted out if characters are engaged in wide-spread property destruction, but this will be handled on a case-by-case basis. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, ignore it, it's cool. Theft will no longer result in an auto-catch by the Long Arm of the Law.

• The Weather.... oh yeah, see that glitch below.

• If you have a location that hasn't yet been added to the City Map, leave a comment explaining where you'd like it and we'll add it in.

( So what's all this about a glitch....? )

dien

Good morning, Taxon!

It's the end of 2012. We hope it's been a fun year for everyone, and we hope you're sticking with us for 2013. Tomorrow is the last day of our high school glitch. There will be the big High School Dance post, complete with a celebratory ball drop at the stroke of midnight. It's been tremendous fun for this mod and I hope it's been a blast for y'all as well. As always, backtagging on any of the high school posts is allowed and encouraged ~~and I myself will be coff catching up on my tags there soon~~.

And the day AFTER tomorrow is January 1, the start of new year and the start of some changes as pertains to Taxon at least. I'll be putting up another post soon with more details, but we know for sure that the City will be shrinking in size. We're going to be doing some overhauling of our FAQ text, the Wiki, the maps, the write-ups up of the city, and tweaking rules and ways that the city and the NPCs work here and there. We hope to take your feedback from the last How's Taxon's Driving into account in making Taxon a place where characters and players can feel engaged, and we hope it can be a fresh start for everyone in some ways.

We might not have every change completely implemented on the first, but we'll get as much stuff worked out as possible. The Player HMD that was scheduled for soon will be pushed back a little in order to let us try and focus on switching some things up.

Until then, enjoy your New Year's Eve and the traditional Taxon Ball Drop! *blows kisses*

taxonmods

Hey Taxonians! After some late-night mumbling amongst ourselves, and after some amusing-as-all-get-out talk in group chat about glitch ideas, the original plan to do a 'past or future' glitch for the characters is being put on hold until the holiday busy-ness is past for people.
Instead, we're planning some gratuitous silliness for this holiday season: Taxon's going High School.

Starting December 15, characters will turn into silly high school versions of themselves. This does not necessarily mean 'what my character was actually like at age 14-18', it's more a 'stick them into an over-the-top American High School setting and role'. (As an example, Jason Blood's going to be turning into that gothy kid with the eyeliner and the bad poetry who tells people he worships Satan, rather than the earnest would-be knight he probably was as a young man.)

We encourage you to be a student but if you absolutely cannot think of a way that can go, faculty is an option too! Participation is optional, but we really hope everyone plays and has some wacky fun.

The glitch will go until the end of the month, returning everyone to normal in time to ring in the new year. At Taxon High, there's a holiday dance planned and attendance is mandatory...

AND NOW, DISCUSS YOUR PLANS TO INFLICT HIGH SCHOOL SHENANS ON YOUR CHARACTERS AND GIVE THEM EMBARRASSMENT FOR AGES AFTER. Yes good.

taxonmods

Summer! A time for sunbathing! For pristine white beaches! For boating! For mai tais on deck chairs! For shenanigans.

School's out, and it's GLITCH TIME, kids. Taxon's going avast, and ahoy, and yo-ho-ho-ho and a bottle of Survivor: LOST Lord of the Gilligans.

What's happening: On June 10, the citizens of Taxon will wake up on a boat. No, a ship, even. The HMS (Hamsters' Muckety Ship) Taxon is a sailing ship, with, erm, the giant sails and the wooden decks needing to be swabbed and the cannons and the general old-timey port-and-starboardiness of her. There's plenty of food and water (and grog!) but no suntan lotion, and your tablets will only show the people on the boat with you.

Characters will wake up belowdecks, and on emerging to the deck proper will see nothing but water for miles around. A tropical sun is beating down, and there are no Extras to be seen, only whoever else is on the boat with them.

After that, well... don't be surprised if you're attacked by pirates. Or sea monsters. Or shipwrecked on a tropical island and forced to team up to survive possible pygmies, giant snakes, volcanoes, mosquitoes, death traps, malaria, sunburn, and anything else it occurs to us to throw at you. (Legal disclaimer: none of these are guaranteed but a few are a safe bet, depending on what y'all wanna do.)

Where's the city? Where's the hatches? Where's the Extras? Where's the air conditioning? Can you figure out how to get back, or will you be strangled in the night with seaweed by someone who can't stand your snoring?

Like most of our city-wide plots, participation in this is optional....ish. Characters whose muns choose to have them remain in the safe, comfortable, scurvy-free city of Taxon proper will still notice some changes that they can (and should!) respond to.

If you're sailing:

June 10 - June 20: Your character will be on the HMS Taxon. Confined on a ship with your fellow prisoners, with no easy apparent way to talk to those citizens who aren't there. The ship will have a hatch, but all it will produce are horribly clichéd 'pirate' (or Royal Navy) clothes and beachwear. Food and water will be available freely on board, although you may get sick of ship's biscuits. (Duration: 10 days)

June 21 - July 11: Your character will be on a tropical island, replete with many horrors to be discovered. Food and water will not be provided, but must be gathered from the jungle (unless you can spontaneously create food or something). Are there hatches hidden somewhere in the jungle? Or merely poo-flinging monkeys? Who knows? Perhaps you should explore. There's a large smoking mountain. Clearly nothing at all could go wrong.

Raft-building to try and sail back to Taxon proper is highly encouraged. It's not like there's sharks or anything. Right? Right?

If you're staying:

~~You wuss~~ The City's going to be rather empty. And creepy. And empty. All the Extras are just gone, and everyone who's off in castaway land is gone as well. They don't show up on the tablets, and their programmed possessions have disappeared as well. It will look as though a huge chunk of the city's population just vanished overnight.

Characters of the super-hacky persuasion, in both regular!Taxon and in shipwreck!Taxon, may well be able to coax the tablets into letting them talk to the others.

This plot will run from June 10 to July 11. If you intend to involve your muses, especially if they're goin' to sea, please comment and tell us any ideas, thoughts, suggestions, or questions you may have.

Finally, have this to get you all in a shipshape mood. SAILING, SAILING, JUMPING OFF THE RAILING.

taxonmods

1. YOU GUYS THIS IS AWESOME. We have some fine-quality horrors and badassery going on and everyone's encouraged to partake in it. While the plot was supposed to wrap on the 7th, your mods have decided to let it go on a bit so everyone who wants to can have a chance to jump in! It's not at all too late to get your epic plottings on, so use this post to touch base with each other.

2. PLOT RESOLUTION. The aliens have screwed up bad. Real bad. They're scrambling to find a way to to get the trapped citizens out of the quarantined, corrupted version of the city and also clean up the bad code so this doesn't happen again. A solution has been devised to take care of both birds with one stone: have the characters and their shiny clean code pass through the project's mainframe like data-scrubbers, and then extract them back into Taxon proper all safe and sound.

Do not question the logic of how alien technology works, puny humans, your feeble meat-brains cannot comprehend it. In-game, things will go like so:

STEP ONE: Characters trapped in alterna-Taxon will each find a door. This door will be intensely inviting, as it is either from home or really cool-looking or a handy escape from whatever horror is presently chasing them down. They'll decide that going through the door is the best possible idea ever.

STEP TWO: Once that's done the character will find themselves in a room filled with highly imposing technological monoliths with a single winding path snaking through them. This will represent the journey through the mainframe, and as the character advances they'll note little blinky yellow lights turning solid green.

STEP THREE: Improbably, tablets will work and the character's location will be visible on the map. This means everyone in Taxon Prime will be able to determine where their lost comrades are: in the inaccesable and (until now) unknown sublevels of Sanctuary.

STEP FOUR: After a time the path will end at an archway, beyond which the character will see the last place they were before getting caught up in the bad code. Once they step through, they'll find themselves right back in that spot, safe and sound aside from whatever fresh traumas they'd picked up on their adventure.

A post will be going up Sunday or Monday for everyone to find their doors and get themselves home. Or back to the "normal" city. Or away from all the things trying to kill them. This post is for all your plottings for the back-half of the event, so get in the car!

sofo

It’s an ordinary day just like any other. No fairy tales, no unspoken horrors of frilly aspirations or otherwise, the weather's easing up; just an increasingly mild day in the early days of the third month of the Taxonian year. You’re on the tram, or driving down the streets in your fancy car, or walking home when suddenly you find yourself inexplicably drawn somewhere you didn’t expect - maybe you thought you heard a familiar voice over yonder tiny inner city park, maybe you could've sworn you saw someone you once knew. You step off the platform, or take a turn down an especially shiny-looking street, and find yourself just a bit lost. Be it a cul-de-sac or a blocked up alleyway, this is not the way home. You head back to retrace your steps. You check your location on the map - and you're nowhere near where you were going. It’s probably just a bug or something or other; maybe the hamsters need to get off their fat tushes and update the map interface and give people a heads up that they're redecorating their doll house. And this ghost thing is getting old.

-----

The fairy tale glitch lives on in the form of the rather more dangerous aspects of story telling, where sci-fi meets horror and spawns a distorted love child.

In meta terms, the aliens will be scrambling to contain corrupt code lingering after the fairy tale event and keep it from damaging their precious program. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to have as much fun with this as you possibly can.

On March 1, your character can wander right into the messed up code and they won't even know it's happened until it's too late, and they’re going to have to work hard to find their way out.

Your character will be visible on everyone's tablet maps including their own, but should other characters go to investigate the location, they'll find...nothing amiss. Not your character, not the tiniest sign anything's amiss. You could be standing right next to each other according to the map, but there's no one there. For example, the movie Silent Hill. It isn't the best of game adaptations to the silver screen, but there's a scene where the female protagonist and her husband are standing in what is clearly the exact same area. They're literally right next to each other, but she's caught in one dimension, and he is left in the Real World.

You've wandered into Mirror!Taxon. And in Mirror!Taxon, nothing is as it seems. It's a parallel pocket full of any horrors imaginable.

In in-game terms, your character will be stuck for the duration of the glitch, as the code twists and writhes itself into ever crazier, more dangerous strings. Call it a malfunction, call it a bug - it’s there, it's sinister and has eyes everywhere, and will have to be dealt with. While the hamsters upstairs try to fix the problem, you'll have to fend for yourself - and maybe, just maybe, you'll be able to fix the problem yourselves. Towards the end of the event, the code will have anthropomorphed into a living thing, a monster for the hero types of Taxon to try and defeat.

This glitch, named Haunted Holo, will last for a week (March 1-8), and be completely opt-out-able. Throughout the week, the bad code will migrate from one area to the next. It's on random! Meaning you can choose to subject your character to the event at any time you want, in any place. Anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

For examples of what kinds of stuff you can get up to, here follows three scenarios with three very different characters, courtesy of yours truly:

Exhibit A: Mick

It's an ordinary night for Mick, spent half patrolling the city in his fancy car, half acting watch dog for Beth at her place. Suddenly, he catches a glimpse of something running across the street. He hits the breaks. It's a girl. A young girl, dressed in a white night gown with flowing, pale blond hair. "Beth?"

He jumps out of the car, and starts running. If this place is as freaky as everyone says it is, he can't let Beth run into trouble all on her own (glitched, or an alternate, or whatever this is). He can hear her crying. Just a little but further down the road, and he'll catch up.

Kid moves fast.

Exhibit B: Cain

He didn't know what he was expecting when he woke up to the familiar, warm smells of bread fresh out the oven. No, he knows very well what he expected. He thought it was Paul, letting himself in at the break of dawn to make sure he wasn't starving.

He didn't expect to see his late wife mincing dried fruit at his kitchen counter.

"...Adora?"

Exhibit C: Bagoas

Clad in a warm winter coat of finer fabrics, trimmed with fur and generously given to him by his host, Bagoas relishes the fresh morning air. He is not on errand, though Glitch suggested he go out and familiarize himself with the city first hand. It would do him no good to stay confined to the palace at the Northern Island, or so Glitch told him. He knows he speaks truth, and decided this morning to heed his advice. Tugging his soft, woven gloves to fit his hands better, for a moment he doesn't watch where he's going.

But then, a smell on the air, of home. Incense and fire and lilies all blending to bring his mind at once to Susa. He follows it, speeding his step despite being ignorant of the layout of this vast city. It is bigger than Susa, perhaps even surpassing Babylon.

In the distance, he can hear the sounds of the bazaar. Before he knows it, he is running towards it, desperate for anything that speak to him of home.

But what he finds is not home, but Ptolemy, and an accusation of poisoning the King. They say he is no better than his namesake, the Vizier, and must be tried by both Persians and Macedonians. His crime is regicide, and the penalty is twofold; the Persians will have his ears and nose before death (like his father, just like his father), and the Macedonians will have his life.

There is no escape.

------

Get plotting in the comment section, and let us know what you think. Suggestions are also very much appreciated. If you have any questions, just let us know.

Also, this.

taxonmods

~*~Once upon a time there were three mods, and they decided that their game could do with more once upon a time. "Needs more dragons!" said the first. "Needs more trolls!" said the second. "Needs more horrors!" said the third. And so they set about briefly changing the city of Taxon to the kingdom of Taxonia, where there would be dragons and trolls and witches and pixies and all manner of creatures of legend, fable, myth, and tale, and everyone lived happily ever after (for some value of "lived" and "happily").~*~

...which is a round about way of saying that we are fast approaching the AU glitch outlined in the State of the Taxon, which will begin on November 27th and run through December 6th. During that time, the alien's programming will be pushed to its limits to convert the city to a sprawling kingdom of lore, filled with enchanted forests, quaint villages, mystic lakes, and a spire-topped castle. Everything will have a Ye Olde Timey flair, so most modern conveniences will vanish and be replaced with Ye Olde Timey equivalents. Except for tablets. Enjoy that bit of incongruity.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR CHARACTERS: Everyone will believe themselves to be natives of Taxonia and embody characteristics of one or more fairy tale characters. Note that "fairy tale" in this instance implies just about ANY story that can begin with "once upon a time". Mash-ups are totally permissible and encouraged, and no one is locked into playing out any of the tales. There is ALSO the option of having your character be unaffected and boggle at the goings-on.

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND: Fairy tales can be dark. People die, people are made into pies and eaten, things are just generally twisted. While we are totally in favor of any and all horrors, we will INSIST on including warnings on posts/comment threads which venture into these subjects. Basically: when in doubt, warn, and if we or another player comes to you saying that something needs a warning, we implore you to follow through with those requests as soon as possible.

ETA DEATH PENALTIES: Just like with the zombie plot, should a character die as a result of this event you have the option of waiving the death penalty. Your character need not loose their memories of Taxon or their programmed possession. And, as the aliens are always improving, character will not come back to the arrival room and instead reappear where they died. Of course if you WANT to play around with the death penalty then that's always cool too.

Now for fun stuff: LINKS! References and resources and things to draw inspiration from, enjoy!
♛ Fairy Tale Tropes, to give a general idea of various character types and story tricks and stuff. THIS IS A LINK TO TV TROPES. IT WAS NICE KNOWING YOU.
♛ Wikipedia list of fairy tales - exactly what it says on the tin.
♛ Grimm's fairy tales - for all your twisty awful needs.
♛ Russian stories - recced by Sofie :D

Got all that? AWESOME. Comment away with preliminary plans (or pleas for help in figuring out what to do!) and let the games begin \o/

taxonmods

As detailed in the State of the Taxon (and no it is NEVER too late to jump in on that, btw), Sunday begins Opposite Plot, wherein character will display behaviors that are the inverse of their typical selves. Basically you can take any or all of a given character's personality traits and flip the switch. Got a shy wallflower who's been needing CR? Make them a boisterous social butterfly for a bit! Or go the other direction and have your goody-two-shoes hero don a Cape Of Evil and plot their enemies' doom.

How far you take it - and how long the effects last - is up to you. The glitch will run for two weeks, ending at midnight on the 22nd. This post is for determining if/how your character(s) will be affected, and what sort of shenanigans will result. Have fun!

SPECIAL NOTE: tomorrow there will be a player HMD, which we encourage everyone to participate in. There will be a top comment for mod and game crit, so get your comments ready!

taxonmods

Randomizations are here! The list is as follows below.

Puck ↔ Kurt Hummel
Piper Halliwell ↔ Don Draper
Wikus van der Merwe ↔ Max Guevara
Fitz Kreiner ↔ Quinn Fabray
Glitch ↔ Buffy Summers
Angel ↔ Kaylee Frye
Liz Parker ↔ Jenna Sommers
Corwin Barimen ↔ River Tam
Willow Rosenberg ↔ Rorschach

Since we have multiple chainings happening this month, if anyone would like to participate in a second round of randomizations, please reply here, to the sticky comment. We'll post those randomizations sometime around the 15th to give people time to toss their character's name into the pot. Otherwise, use this post to plot amongst yourselves. ♥

taxonmods

After checking the results of the Giant Glitch Poll we had earlier this month, it looks like the glitch for the month of August will be Joined at the Hip: Part Deux!

In order to prepare so you guys will have plenty of time to plan and plot, please reply to this post if you'd like your character to be paired off randomly. You can always, of course, pair off on your own. All we need here is characters you want us to pair off for you so we can have a list up and ready with the State of the Taxon at the first of the month!

ETA: YOU CAN HAVE MULTIPLE PAIRINGS FOR THIS GLITCH! Comment here if you'd like one pair to be completely random and assigned by mods in addition to any other pairs you'd like to do.

taxonmods

THE NEW MAP IS HERE!

Today (Saturday the 25th) is the last day of the Sanctuary glitch, and that means tomorrow morning all the characters can step out the doors into the new and rearranged City of Taxon!

You can see the new map here. All your locations are there, listed by district with their coordinate number. We've also added new locations: Lake Whitman, the Kahlo River, the Waterhouse River, and Bronte Beach! Each body of water has its own page with a quick description of the area and what you can find there.

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MAP, NEED SOMETHING CHANGED OR ADDED, ANYTHING AT ALL, LET US KNOW ON THIS POST.

Don't forget to have your character talk to the aliens, if you're so inclined, and as always TAG YOUR POSTS.

taxonmods

WE DO IN FACT SPEAK AMERICANO. AND EVERYTHING ELSE.

Only with a lot less actual speaking for a while. As outlined in May's State of the Taxon, we’ve got a system glitch starting around midday on Sunday the 22nd.

An attempt by the aliens to stop the citizens from understanding the incoming radio signals will result in the characters losing the ability to speak - or indeed make any vocalizations - and the tablets will only support text transmissions. This will last through the 26th, with some residual effects lingering until the 29th.

List of details!

● At the start of the glitch, there will be a five minute period in which characters will speak gibberish, nonsense sounds strung together.

● After this, spoken communication will be shut off completely and tablets will default to text.

● Characters who know languages other than English will find themselves writing in that language or languages. They can stick to English with a lot of effort, but words or phrases will still slip through.

● On the 26th, verbal communication will be restored. Multilingual characters will still find themselves slipping into non-English.

● This will all be cleared up and normalcy restored on the 29th.

For characters who will be affected by the multi-lingual shenanigans, you can use Google Translate to muck up your tags, or denote things in other languages by bolding the text.

Questions? Plottings? Flailings? This is the post for 'em! Speak now or forever hold... you get the idea.

Current Music: Jar Of Hearts

taxonmods

And so, sadly, the flood of newbies and old friends came to an end.

ICly, sometime this morning, all the characters here for the event disappeared. A little while after that, those who need the pause glitch to forget they're fictional or any other things you'd rather they not remember.

IF YOUR CHARACTER IS GETTING THE MINI PAUSE GLITCH, please reply to the sticky thread in this post. All we need is which characters will be getting abducted, and you can have them forget as much additional information from the event as you like.

OOCly, we'll be leaving posting at

taxwalling open so people can post that have been unexpectedly gone or busy during the weekend. We'll turn it back to moderated posting at midnight Tuesday, the 19th (central time), and as always backtagging will be around for you forever. ♥

taxonmods

taxwalling IS NOW OPEN FOR BUSINESS!

Mods will be around to approve membership requests for anyone that hasn't gotten their invite (thanks LJ) and be sure to let us know if you need anything else!

taxonmods

...Hopefully that got everyone's attention. THIS JUST IN: THAT FIERY MONSTER OF DOOM WAS A LIE.

What is not a lie, however, is that despite our best efforts LJ seems to be holding back notifs for some of the invites we sent out for

taxwalling. We've gone ahead and resent invites to our last holdouts, but if the works are further gummed up and you still have not gotten your invite notif-- and thus did not join the comm-- go ahead and ask for membership (currently played Taxon characters only, remember!) and we'll go through and manually approve those as we get them.

Two more days until Fourth Wall, Taxon! Get those requests in and get pumped!

taxonmods

The time for fourth-walling is almost upon us, Taxon! And that means it's plotting time. Before we get to the comment spam and shenanigans, though, we're going to give you some more detail about just how this is going down.

IS THERE METAPLOT?
Of course there is. As we said on the State of the Taxon, in honor of the Taxon program's successful two-year anniversary, someone upstairs is going to implement some shady code in an all out systems overload.

Now, why exactly someone felt the need for this much of a spectacle isn't clear, and this time there won't be the usual post-shenanigans apologies.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
Again, just like we said back on the SOTT at the beginning of the month, we've made a new community just for the event: taxwalling. Later today/tonight, we'll be sending out invitations to all currently taken characters.

Posting there for the next week will be allowed, but moderated. If you think you're going to be gone for the weekend go ahead and write your post up for trolling ahead of time and we'll push it through the queue first thing midnight on Friday. Comments there will be open to non-members. After that any journal that is a member of the community will be allowed to post without waiting for a mod to approve it. Also, in the usual Taxon tradition, backtagging will remain open for basically ever, so don't worry if you didn't get a chance to troll between the 15th and the 17th; you can go back and troll again when you've got the chance.

We're limiting posting access because we will be counting those posts for April's activity check. Tag your posts with your character's tag (we've already set them all up for you), but we are not counting comments done there with taken characters for AC.

WHAT KINDS OF CHARACTERS ARE ALLOWED FOR FOURTH WALL?
All of them!

We've made the decision to not exclude any type of character journal from participating, so this does include all anime/manga, real persons, and under-16 characters, in addition to all the other characters that are appable at Taxon. So invite your friends, advertise all over, and have a ball!

HOW DOES MY FOURTH-WALL CHARACTER SHOW UP IN THE CITY?
Much like the way the Extras come and go in the city, characters here for the event will bypass the arrival room and just "show up" in the city. Stick them wherever you like or wherever is most condusive to your trolling exploits.

However, unlike the Extras, characters here for this event will still have some of the usual trappings properly taken characters have: the silver bracelet on their right wrist, complete with 350 credits of purchasing power, and a tablet (either mysteriously in their hand, pocket, or made 'travel size' and integrated into the aforementioned bracelet). They'll even have a dot for themselves on the map, be able to change their display names, and bring with them any small possessions that would be covered in the usual "if you're wearing it you bring it in free" deal. This means things like guns, accessories, and usual pocket contents.

I WANT TO GET TROLLED, BUT NOT BY X/Y/Z. WHAT DO I DO?
Permissions, permissions, permissions!

We advise everyone to put a small ooc note on their taxwalling posts outlining what you're comfortable/uncomfortable with having occur during the glitch. Things like doubles of themselves, not wanting specific spoilers if they get trolled by characters ahead of them in the timeline, or not wanting to be made aware that they're fiction are some examples of things you might want to mention on a quick permissions note.

GREAT! --WAIT, YOU MEAN YOU CAN BREAK THE FOURTH WALL DURING THE EVENT? ISN'T THAT AGAINST THE RULES?
It is, but just like how we're allowing all characters to participate whether they're allowed under the rules or not, we're also making an exception to break this specific rule during the event. Considering the sudden, huge influx of characters, the aliens wouldn't be able to go through all of them and fudge the fictional media information, could they?

OKAY, WHAT HAPPENS IF MY CHARACTER FINDS OUT THEY'RE FICTIONAL DURING THE EVENT OR GETS OTHERWISE SOULCRUSHINGLY BROKEN?
Well, the aliens have a plan of action for just such an occasion. With a quick pause glitch and a memory tune-up all will be well post-event.

All characters that find out they are fictional will get the pause glitch and have that information removed. They can, of course, remember everything else. It's just that they can't keep the memories of finding out they're fictional or the aliens' special program would be tainted beyond repair. Additionally, you can opt to have your character get a quick pause glitch and have other memories you'd rather them not keep around fuzzed out of their brains.

For those of you unfamiliar with pause glitches, they involve a character being directly removed from the city. Think actual alien abduction, complete with some cursory probing! They're usually used for players that will be on extended hiatuses, because it involves glitching those around them into not noticing the paused characters' absence for long periods of time, letting them carry on without worry.

To serve our very specific purposes here, the pause glitches will last only a few hours and characters can notice absences as much or as little as you please.

All that said, go forth and plot! We've got a sticky thread in this post where you can put your questions if you have them, and this post will be copied in its almost-entireity into the taxwalling community. The post there will have screened comments where you can take any complaints or issues during the event.

ETA:

In case you've never participated in a Fourth Wall event before, here are some examples from ones done at other games:

Angel | Dawn | Faith | Sookie | Hermione | Max | Elena

These are just examples of how things generally work, and not step by step guidelines so don't feel like you need to match them exactly.

taxonmods

THE END OF THE ZOMBIES IS NIGH!

Which means we have a few more zombie end-game things to tell you about, because information is good and knowledge is power.

For the next few days, until mid-day Wednesday, the power in the city will remain off everywhere except the Sanctuary. Buildings will not repair themselves and the dead bodies of Extras and player characters won't get deprogrammed. You'll have roughly two days of a zombie-free, desolate city to do with what you will.

At noon on Wednesday (IC time; we'll put the posts for this up closer to 3am because we're nocturnal like that), this will all suddenly change. Any remaining bodies will disappear, buildings will be restored to their former glory one by one, the power will boom back to life, and after about half an hour all the Extras will re-appear much like the time they were first introduced to the city.

ALL DEAD PLAYER CHARACTERS, however, will return in a joint arrival inside the Sanctuary. They will be wearing whatever it was they had on when they died and be in perfect healthy condition. Please feel free, o players of dead folks, to work out how you'd like to manage that post in the comments. Like every other arrival, there will be automatic holo, but we'll leave it up to you to decide who makes the post itself. If you have any questions, let us know and we'll be quick to answer them!

Once everyone is back in the city, IC-timeline-wise, the aliens will be making a short appearance in a post to apologize and lay blame in equal parts.

Feel free to continue backdating threads with zombie mayhem as much as you like, and use this post to work out what's been going on between the backdating and the present so that everyone can stay on the same page as the event ends!

PS TAG YOUR POSTS OR WE'LL PUT A ZOMBIEBER IN YOUR CLOSET

taxonmods

Hey guys! Zombie time is almost upon us, so we’re putting this post up with more detailed information about the zombies, having you sign up if you want to turn your character into one of the undead, and extra plotting to your heart’s content!

First thing’s first: HOW TO BECOME A ZOMBIE

Step one is, as we said on the SOTT, infection through being bitten by another zombie. The symptoms of infection, other than the obvious presence of a bite-mark, are the general symptoms usually associated with the cold or flu: fever, chills, coughing and sneezing, with an added intense appetite. Step two is death. A character that has been infected will die from the infection in 24 hours, unless something else speeds that process up. The something else can be anything from blood loss to being hit by a clown car. As long as their brain remains intact, they’ll move on to step three: reanimating as a zombie two hours after death.

Now for the fun of basic zombie behavior!

All zombies, no matter the type, will have the following in common:

advanced decomposition, where one day of reanimated undead life is equivalent to roughly a week of natural decomposition
they don’t just bite, they want to eat; while it is possible to get a bite and then run away, the zombies won’t be pleased and will go after their prey
loud noises (like yelling, screaming, gunshots, etc.) will attract any zombie that is able to hear it; noise is a sign of life, and life = dinner
much like the noises, zombies can smell their own and tell them apart from living prey nearby
feel no pain; as an advantage of being dead, they don’t get hurt and won’t respond or back away from any damage done to their bodies unless it incapacitates them somehow or kills them
have no supernatural powers; vampires or slayers or telepaths or what have you that become zombies will not retain any of their special powers once they reanimate
destroyed brain = dead for good; if the brain is severely damaged before reanimation can occur, then it simply won’t, and severe damage to the brain is the only way to kill a zombie

Most of the zombies will be Shamblers, Extras that have been infected and risen in large numbers all throughout the city. These will be slow moving, without any higher brain function other than what is required to move and process external stimuli like sound and smell. Occasionally, they’ll congregate in groups, following each others movements. Such groups can be as small as three or four zombies wandering down the street, or as large as twenty congregating outside a safehouse that’s been compromised. If something catches the attention of all the zombies in a given area, like an explosion, that number could triple as they all move toward it in search of living prey.

The other type of zombie that will populate Taxon is the Mover. Your characters can be Movers, or you can have them be Shamblers. It’s entirely up to you. Movers, compared to Shamblers, are much faster and more agile. They can even run, though because of the advanced decomposition of their muscles they won’t be as fast as an uninfected human. These zombies will also be able to do things like hide, recognize other signs of life (like the presence of smoke from a camp fire), and will travel alone in search of prey. However, this much higher brain function does not mean they will have memories from life, and they will not choose to spare a victim or show any brain function outside of what has been described above.

If you’re going to have your character become a zombie, please comment to the sticky mod comment at the top of this post. You have the choice between making your character a Shambler or Mover, and whether or not you’ll go through with having a death penalty. For those who don’t know about the death penalties, when a character dies and gets reprogrammed in Taxon, upon their re-arrival in the Sanctuary they can either lose their memories of their previous stay in the city or one of their programmed possessions. For this glitch, we’re waiving the need for a penalty, but if you think it would be interesting to give your character a clean slate it is totally still an option.

To help you know when and where the zombie uprising is going on, we’ll be making IC posts to the main community complete with Taxon maps that will track the progression of the infection through the city during the course of the event.

Additionally, we realize this is a mod-run plot full of death and mayhem, but that doesn’t mean warnings won’t apply. If your post during this glitch is going to heavily involve zombie killing, death, and character infection, please include the following warning at the bottom of your post:

WARNING: ZOMBIES! HORRORS! DEATH AND DESTRUCTION WITHIN!

If your post will have any additional upsetting content (suicide to prevent reanimation or a particularly gruesome death scene, for example) then please warn for that specifically and cut any content in the post itself that describes it.

ONE LAST THING! Completely unrelated to zombies, but nonetheless helpful for plotting: we've got a new contact post! This one is locked to members of the OOC community to protect your personal information, so if you have any changes that need to be made, please look over yonder and let us know.

Now get to plotting, signing up, and rocking out like the undead!