OOC Heaven

July Announcements

Before we begin with this month’s announcements, we have something important to say.

Due to many recent real life developments taking away the time our moderators could spend on The Far Shore as well as a lack of apps combined with a high drop rate, we have decided to begin moving The Far Shore into endgame. While we could put out a poll for more moderators, we feel moving into endgame is the best way to provide our players with a satisfactory conclusion to the game.

This does not rule out the game re-opening, if ever, but we feel that the level of changes needed to finish the transformation does not line up with the availability of the current mod team to get those changes implemented in a timely fashion, while also performing the regular mod duties to keep the game running. Points will be frozen after the final tally in early August, with mods continuing to process Regains for a few days after the final tally.

Currently we are looking at two options for endgame: 1) a simple ending and game closure, or 2) the ending log + turning the game into a proper sandbox - which means leaving the comms and everything open for logs and the like set in The Far Shore's setting. The ending would involve the Crystal allowing characters to leave/return to the setting, revealing how characters arrive in The Far Shore, and a general explanation of what the major NPCs will become busy doing, i.e. why they aren't available anymore. Regardless, the sandbox option would allow players to continue playing as they have been, with minimal to no moderator oversight. The game will be moving into endgame with the culminating event log posted by the mods going up August 1st. The poll will close on August 1st as well.

Thank you to all our players, past and present, for such a wonderful RP experience,
-The Far Shore Mods






Happenings

The Near Shore

All over the world, reports of ayakashi attacks are going down in frequency.

• The rainy season is in full swing on the Near Shore, so pack an umbrella or two if you venture out!
  
  At the base of Mt. Fuji are the Five Fuji Lakes, and of these lakes Lake Kawaguchi is the most accessible to tourists. This time of year, they host the Fuji Kawaguicko Herb Festival to showcase the 70,000 lavender flowers in bloom on the lakeshore. The festival is known for its lavender flavored soft serve ice cream and special events hosted throughout the season.
  
  Just because it’s rainy doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do! Museums are always open, rain or shine, and there are plenty of interesting ones around on the Near Shore. From the Yebisu Bear Museum in Shibuya to the Edo-Tokyo Museum near Asakusa, there’s a museum for just about everything.
  
  

The Far Shore

After reviewing all of her findings in the matter of Sabimei vs Sotero and Votelli, Amaterasu will make an announcement on June 15th (OOC July 1st)

• The nature of the crystal and dolls needs more research, so there will be a group descending on the library in the wake of her announcement.
  
• While the research is being finished (during the next OOC month leading up to the Endgame log), those with magical inclinations are welcome to join Amaterasu's spellcasters, or allude to it going on as they go about their other business.
  
• As chaos in heaven dwindles, so too does the chaos in the Near Shore. Many of the old gods have had less prayers to answer and less ayakashi to fend off, so they are spending more of their time around the Far Shore than otherwise, recently.
  
• The reports of missing items will be resolved with the library event.

Noteworthy Ayakashi

None

Weather

Here you can see the weather starting on June 1.

Events

Dusting off the Library

One more mystery solved.

• Meet the Library Spirit that's caused everyone to struggle finding the book they want all this time and (possibly) appease him so he won't keep intervening anymore.


• With the Spirit placated, if you'd like to help the Crystal Research being done by Amaterasu's spellcasters, you can do so!


• Help or hinder the librarians as they try to sort out which books and other bound volumes actually belong to the library and which ones were taken by mistake the last few weeks.


• Treasure Hunt! A book date, but platonic. Help someone else find a book that they want and vice-versa, or give each other carte blanche to find anything at all that your friend (?) might like, then give it to them and see how you do!


• Calligraphy Practice! Sometimes there's too many people in one section. If you're hating the overcrowded feeling, maybe sit down with someone else to practice Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji, or give someone else advice who's working to improve


• IC Date: June 15th 2017

Past Happenings in the Heavens

Major Events

July Announcements	August Announcements	September Announcements
October Announcements	November Announcements	December Announcements
January Announcements	February Announcements	March Annoucements
April Announcements	May Announcements	June Annoucements
July Announcements	August Annoucements	September Announcements
October Announcements	November Announcements	December Announcements
January Announcements	March SOTG / Additional Details	SOTG Response
May Announcement	June Announcement

• If your character still wants a gift basket from Orihime, they are still welcome to request one throughout July and early August

June Announcements

We sincerely apologize for the delay in this posting and the event due to multiple mod illnesses.



Happenings

The Near Shore

Summertime is heating up on the Near Shore!

• Rice-planting culminated in May, but that means that a variety of local festivals are celebrating its completion during the first half of June! The most celebrated one is in Otaue on June 14 at the famous Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine in Osaka, Japan. It's said to be a favorite of Lady Suijin's.


• While June is home to many seasonal flavors, a growing trend in Tokyo is Matcha Dessert Buffets! Don't miss out on these delicacies!


• Love cats? All throughout the month of June in Naramachi, a section of the city Nara, hosts the Nyaramachi Neko Art Festival. There are giant cardboard cutouts, pottery, capsule toy machines, artwork, clothing, and jewelry all available for purchase in local shops! For the felines themselves, there's local initiatives spaying and neutering the strays, while attempting to find homes for them, and many a cat can be found at cat cafes. There's even a beauty salon which will apply makeup to customers to make them resemble performers in the play Cats.

The Far Shore

June in the Far Shore will not be quite as muggy as the rainy season in Japan down in the Near Shore, and for many of the gods it is being viewed with the solemnity of an Equinox, a transitory time period. Which kind? Who can say.

• In the wake of the accusation of Sabimei by Sotero and Votelli, all of Amaterasu's shinki have been held within the temple grounds. All communications go through Koten or Kiten, part of Amaterasu's retinue, as they stand guard at the gates for messages. They allow no one in or out. Rumor is that Ikuten, her exemplar, is taking this very seriously, while Sotero and Votelli have been allowed to linger just beyond the gates.


• In the same conversations where Sotero and Votelli's names come up - and with greater frequency - another question surfaces: "Maybe they're staying with him?" Then another: "What do you even call the place where he's been banished to? The Far Far Shore?" The answer is usually variation on the theme that places go nameless to keep them out of such conversations, and that applies to the people who live there too.
  
• The reports of missing items continue, increasing in frequency. While the items continue to be categorized as "bound volumes" - books, papers, pamphlets, etc. - the focus on the traitor has taken everyone's attention.

Noteworthy Ayakashi

• Hippocampus-like ayakashi are appearing around beaches. Since they look like horses, they are drawing in amused children, some of whom can't get back to the beach due to the undertow. Can you save the children while fending off the pods of aquatic ayakashi?


• Little Dicks are the unsubtle nickname given to a variety of small ayakashi that are hovering around mass transit like trains and cabs, making polite people act rude and rude people get much worse. While the size of normal insects, when viewed up-close they more closely resemble the statues being carted around for certain phallus festivals, or more accurately a certain crude meme (cartoony NSFW). They have a source ayakashi somewhere; defeat it, and all the little tendrils will go limp.

Weather

Here you can see the weather starting on June 1.

Event

Cultist Arc Finale/Epilogue

We are going to have top-levels that are IC-ly spaced out over approximately 48 hours, but are all posted at the start of the event, and deal with the remnants of the Cultist Threat. We hope that this will help rebuild CR and introduce more opportunities for new CR in a team-like situation.

• Cutting Ties! All of the rank & file NPC Cultists need to have their ties to The Far Shore cut; this will erase the NPCs' memories of their spellcasting skills, loyalties to the Cult, and disdain for Heaven. This can be done between god & shinki pairs, or your shinki character might consider trying it with a Soulless Shinki.


• Blight Circles! One of the Cult's efforts to draw powerful ayakashi to them was by creating these circles in various parts of the world. The areas with these spellworked circles need to be cleansed and the ayakashi near them destroyed.


• Cult Hubs! The physical structures where cultists met have a wealth of inventory to look through and either dispose of or use in future efforts for the Heavens. It might not be glamorous work, but it could offer surprising rewards.


• Gift Baskets! For Gods and Shinki alike, Orihime will provide a gift basket to each and every character, customized as much as possible. This will include, among other things, an article of clothing with a wondrous power unlike any she's made before. Players can request what these items are OOCly, kind of like book requests in the library, but we hope it can to be something you as a player truly feel like is a reward to your character for having come this far.

  Example abilities might include: hover-style flight, lite elemental resistance, green-thumb plant growth boost, etc. - they're just tied to the item.
  Orihime would avoid granting items that help in battle; rather they're meant to enhance the character's everyday life, make their hobbies easier or more fun, that sort of thing.

  Any character who tags into the event (top-level or response) will be eligible for a gift basket, ICly delivered a week after the event.


• IC Date: June 2nd 2017


• If you have any questions, or suggestions for Team-Based Wrap-Up Efforts, feel free to reply to the comment marked 'Event' on this post.
• To participate in the event, you will just need to comment to the event log after it goes up on June 5 at 7PM EST.

Past Happenings in the Heavens

Major Events

July Announcements	August Announcements	September Announcements
October Announcements	November Announcements	December Announcements
January Announcements	February Announcements	March Annoucements
April Announcements	May Announcements	June Annoucements
July Announcements	August Annoucements	September Announcements
October Announcements	November Announcements	December Announcements
January Announcements	March SOTG / Additional Details	SOTG Response
May Announcement

• Last month on May 2, Suijin held an exchange of information about various metaplot aspects related to the Cultists. Notably, characters insisted that Votelli and Sotero were not acting of their own volition when they attacked the Heavens.
• On May 8, new arrivals were brought to the Meeting Hall for orientation and training. We introduced the prospect of other Temples hosting the training next month and received enough interest to move forward with this direction.

Player Plots

If your characters have been up to anything this month that other characters may have noticed -- parties, ayakashi attacks, violent rampages through the Far Shore -- leave a comment on this post to let your fellow players know what's going on!

SOTG Follow-up

Gamewide Changes Post-Cultist Finale

Once the Cultist Arc is finished, we will be putting the finishing touches on the Game Design Changes:

• Post the Setting Page (Formerly God 101 + Shinki 101)
  
• Post the Game Timeline
  
• Add available applications for Native Shinki characters
  
• Add available applications for Canon OCs
  
• For the upcoming TDM, we'll include an OOC Workshopping top-level. If this takes off, we'll consider an entirely separate entry for it!
  
• Monthly Activity will now include TDM links for up to half of the submission. Details pending, but they will be added to the Monthly AC page plus the Activity Check Guidelines linked from those pages and the FAQ)

With these things accomplished, we will be posting a game-specific Enable-Me-Please as well as an ad on the community-wide EMP explaining that we're in a relaunch phase.

Up Next in Plot and Events

Mod Contact will be updated with the conclusion of the Cultist Arc as Kohaku formally steps down as World Mod, Rynn steps up to replace her, and Fae joins the mod team as a Plot Assist mod - mainly someone we'll bounce ideas off of, to help spread out the duties of creative idea generation.

• Next up will be a fun filler arc in July and August, to give players and mods both a break.
  
• Starting in September, we will have another metaplot relevant event, but after that we will alternate every other month, so the next metaplot relevant event won't be until November, then January. On the off months, we will focus on CR-building, Slice of Life, or otherwise non-metaplot related monthly events.

TEST DRIVE # 39



Whether you're trying to figure out how your character would fare in this setting, trying to get some samples together, or just dipping your toes in the water, you've come to the right place! The Test Drive is here to make your life easy by letting you see what the game is like without actually joining it first. So here is how it works:

1: Post a starter with your character, including whether they are a god or shinki in the subject line.
2: Act like your character is established enough in the setting to allow your thread to go places.
3: Take on any god/shinki of your choosing, as long as they're not already in the game!
4: Comment around to the other people on the meme.
5: Have lots of fun!

To get you started, here are some ideas for thread-starters!
Feel free to come up with your own ideas if these don't strike your fancy, though.



Interrupting Illumination
It’s weird enough when your lights start flickering, but it’s even worse when it’s a whole street doing that. People are having trouble working from home, nobody’s sleeping well, children are cranky... and it’s definitely building up bad vibes all around! Help track down the source of these illumination problems, ayakashi caused or not, before ayakashi are drawn to the peoples’ frustrations anyway!


Janky Jeeps
Travelers are finding themselves with all kinds of car troubles - Jeeps especially! Running out of gas, rusting parts, loose steering - it’s incredibly dangerous! Track down the multitude of mini ayakashi that have taken a liking to this brand of vehicle before any more offroaders have to cut their adventures short before they even get off the highway!


King Kong
The news on the Near Shore is all awash with urgent news reports about an escaped gorilla running rampant through a small town. While it hasn’t caused too much property damage, it does seem to be making off with anything shiny that catches his eye, startling the townspeople and climbing into hard-to-reach places. It’s currently taken position at the top of a tall shrine and aggressively threatening anyone who comes close. Won’t somebody do something about this mad monkey?


A Labor of Love
There’s a small park at the center of town that holds a fountain with a single name on a plaque - an elderly gentleman who’d volunteered so much time in tending to the park over the years. Everyone in town knows his name or holds cherished memories of seeing him tend to the grounds with such care and kindness. But this year is the first year the little park will have to fend without him and in his memory, the town has come together to care for it in his place. Help clean up the park or tend to the plants or lend a hand in keeping his beloved park beautiful.


Make Mine Mild
One particular chain of restaurants used to be famous as one of the only places you could get good, spicy food - not anymore! Someone in upper management decreed that their recipes were just too spicy to attract the average customer. Perhaps you can help a single restaurant, the employees or its customers? Perhaps you can go straight to the top and sort out why the upper management Suit And Tie Guy can’t stand a little spice in his life? Or maybe you’re someone who’s THRILLED that the super spicy food is gone and you can enjoy their food now. You might have to beg a friend to keep it that way, though.



If you're uncertain about anything, feel free to check out the Premise, Rules, and FAQ posts. And don't hesitate to ask any questions you might have on the FAQ!
When and if you're ready to join the game, check out the Taken Characters before throwing in a Reserve and starting on your Application
Have fun!

Just a heads up for all those still waiting to check in! There is a little less than 9 hours remaining until Activity Check comes to a close. As of right now, here is a list of people who have not checked in.


Activity/HMD
Waiting on Check in


Natsuru Senou | thirdbeauty
Ryuu Zaou | flutteringprince
Zhu Hong | fierceredlips
Joscelin Fitzthomas | dredefulchilde
Estinien Wyrmblood | estinien


Please check in/turn in activity/HMD here. If you see any mistakes, please just let us know here! Good luck, everyone!

State of the Game



State of the Mods

As we announced recently, we've received assistance in the way of List Mods. What we still needed was a World Mod to replace Kohaku's efforts, as well as another Mod to spread out some of the duties previously accounted for by Kira. For about the last 3 months, you had 2 people doing the amount of work that used to be covered by 4. The Main Mods' time allocated to mod duties had been consumed with much more routine tasks. We tried to balance those tasks across both of us but were not satisfied with the results.

Today, we accepted an offer from Rynn to step in as the new World Mod, which means she is now a Main Mod as well. After she has a chance to ramp up to our processes, she will:

• Answer FAQ questions
  
• Read Applications for game canon compliance
  
• Assist with Event, Prayer, Mission, and TDM by reviewing for game canon compliance

Even so, we are looking to wrap up the Cult plotline within 2-3 monthly events - see more below. After that is over, the balance of Slice of Life and MetaPlot is up for debate. You have a poll at the end of this post to help us decide what kind of game The Far Shore could be going forward.



State of the Metaplot

The game has been running on the consistent plotline of The Cult since the game started. With so many characters passionately invested in resolving The Cult plot line, we feel that they should be rewarded. We have an opportunity to completely wrap it up and start a fresh arc, so we'd like to take it. We believe this is in the best interest of the game. Once the Cult arc has concluded, we will update the Premise page accordingly.

We have ideas for a new arc that would be more sustainable given the amount of time the current Main Mods can dedicate to modship duties. We're not saying we have to close the game. It will include an overhaul of how Metaplot is handed out to players.

Right now, the way metaphor is handled is on the premise that we should keep it hidden and so specialized that only players who want to be involved can be, while other players who want to focus on Slice of Life and Character Dynamics can focus on that. The last time we took a poll about this issue, we came away with the impression that a significant chunk of the playerbase likes to RP both of these major aspects, so we've tried to continue to cater to both. The way we've done that so far - which was announced by the mods a long time ago - is by giving teaser concepts in some mod-run game events, while the breadcrumb clues that would eventually push the game into Endgame are reserved for Custom Missions - where only characters who go looking for more clues will find them. Additionally, this left room for player-suggested events. Notably in the past, we've enabled an Ageswap event, because a character in the game caused it to happen, not because of the Metaplot. We would welcome more player-driven events like that in the future.

Unless the poll tells us that the game is more interested in Slice of Life by a wide margin, future major metaplot hints will be handed out broadly to all characters, rather than in specialized NPC interactions and Custom Missions that require characters to pass on that information before it becomes widely known. We will begin to write out the major plot-demanding functionalities of the NPCs and remove Custom Missions as the only way to engage with them and fulfill plot goals.

Please trust that we're doing the best that we can with the time and resources that we do have.



April Event Announcement: Where Do We Stand?

The event post will not go up until April 4th in deference to both April Fool's Day and to allow for discussion time: the event itself will be a sanctioned mingle for characters to discuss big metaplot questions. Which ones though?

The mods will ideally create 3-5 top levels on the event post to help narrow discussion topics, as well as to assist players in finding relevant information later on. Please chime in below with what topics your characters are most passionate about resolving, getting answers for, etc. relevant to the Cultists. If you see a topic someone else suggested that you like, please add a +1 to it in some fashion.

The topics that players collectively most want to see addressed can then fuel both swapping of information during the event as well as how the mods wrap up the Cult plotline.

ICly, there will be a timespan without any Heavens bureaucrats present at the mingle. OOCly, one more top level will be included from the start of the event, which is when Suijin arrives to ask the characters what they have learned about the Compound, the Cult, and the recent oddities, which she can pass on to Amaterasu. In conjunction with OOC interest levels, what the characters tell Suijin will also affect how the Cult plotline gets wrapped up.



State of the NPCs

We will now begin the transition of NPC duties for Suijin and Votelli to Fru. We have introduced the OOC Contact Post for the NPCs. We hope that players will utilize that post to aid in satisfying their CR goals for NPCs in the game.

If players are not comfortable OOCly communicating with the NPC's player for any reason, they should contact the Main Mods.



Event and Game Style Interests Poll


This concludes our primary initiatives for the Mod Transition, but we continue to welcome Suggestions on game improvements,
- The Far Shore Mods