Ruby City Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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rubycity_ooc2012-01-28 10:45 pm
rubycitymods) wrote in rubycity_ooc2012-01-28 10:45 pm
EVENT - And The Wall Came Tumbling Down
Early morning on Sunday, January 29th, citizens will awake to a great rumbling below their feet—books are knocked off of shelves, things placed on counters wobble dangerously, though no buildings will be felled in this earthquake. There is shaking, and worry to be found in the shaking. And if one were to hurry outside, or perhaps have a glimpse outside of their window…
They would witness the wall surrounding the city falling down.
A great mass of dust and debris rises into the air as the wall laboriously crumbles away, falling stone by stone to the earth below. The city will be surrounded by a ring of rubble once it is through falling, and yet there is still shaking.
Were one to be by the river, they would bear witness to the gush of water that explodes up from under the earth. The red water is washed away, flowing rapidly down the way that the westernmost wall had once hindered before. It leaves the water muddy but clearer than it had been. Eventually, the torrent will slow to a more sedate level as opposed to the urgency in which it had risen up from below the earth. The end of the river seems to flow off a, well, edge.
To the westernmost of the city, what had once been blocked off by the wall is clear. There is a sheer drop into blackness, and that is where the water flows off of. There is nothing this way to be found except that strange drop and it’s not advisory to go jumping off for the sake of experimentation.
Just as the wall had fallen and the river washed clean, so too will things change about the city. Buildings that were out-of-place on the outside have been changed to suit the Victorianesque buildings already present. In the middle of the city, a great obelisk made entirely of what has to be ruby has been placed. It is surrounded by a fountain, the water glinting slightly in the light. Cracked roads and sidewalks have been fixed, and it gives the city a strange paradoxical feeling of archaic newness…
Where the eastern wall has fallen, landscape stretches out for exploration. If one were to go too far to the north or south, they would find themselves at sheer drops like that one to the west. But the beginnings of this landscape roll away in a great stretch of brown, spotted with patches of white snow—a plain. Here the ground is rolling.
If one were to proceed northwest, they would come upon a lake, just before plain changes into forest. It is still and quiet here, but the water is clear and the banks are gently sloping. A few trees ring around the eastern part of the lake and grow into a thicker forest as you proceed eastward.
The forest also ends up bordering most of the south from the city and onward, though a mere smattering of trees. When one reaches the forest— Here the trees grow thick, whatever paths that may have been here before grown over. You could follow the animal’s trails, if you really wanted to. Here there are animals, burrows, fallen trees grown over with moss and lichen and mushrooms, wild vegetables, maybe even an apple tree or several for once the fall rolls around.
If one successfully navigates through the forest, they will come upon the mountains. The jagged slopes reach up high, daunting, though there are ways to be found if you’re so determined. Within the mountains are caves—either naturally created or oddly man-made, though clearly abandoned.
If one were hoping for a way out over the mountains, they may be disappointed. The other side of the mountains and the very bottom trails off into another drop into murky blackness. Don’t lose your balance and go tumbling down!
No, there's nothing about communism in this post. There's also nothing biblical -- sorry, Jericho. This is all about the wall that has long surrounded Ruby City.
In particular, it's crumbled into pieces.
Wait, What? What's going on?
Why the changes?
Anyway, if you have any questions, please let us know in the thread below! The main point here is that we've got some exciting new areas for characters to branch off and explore, but the game itself and the makeup of the City in general remains as it has always been. The locations post has been updated to reflect the changes, and there is now a bestiary available for all the roaming nasties inside and outside of the city.
Thanks, everyone!
They would witness the wall surrounding the city falling down.
A great mass of dust and debris rises into the air as the wall laboriously crumbles away, falling stone by stone to the earth below. The city will be surrounded by a ring of rubble once it is through falling, and yet there is still shaking.
Were one to be by the river, they would bear witness to the gush of water that explodes up from under the earth. The red water is washed away, flowing rapidly down the way that the westernmost wall had once hindered before. It leaves the water muddy but clearer than it had been. Eventually, the torrent will slow to a more sedate level as opposed to the urgency in which it had risen up from below the earth. The end of the river seems to flow off a, well, edge.
To the westernmost of the city, what had once been blocked off by the wall is clear. There is a sheer drop into blackness, and that is where the water flows off of. There is nothing this way to be found except that strange drop and it’s not advisory to go jumping off for the sake of experimentation.
Just as the wall had fallen and the river washed clean, so too will things change about the city. Buildings that were out-of-place on the outside have been changed to suit the Victorianesque buildings already present. In the middle of the city, a great obelisk made entirely of what has to be ruby has been placed. It is surrounded by a fountain, the water glinting slightly in the light. Cracked roads and sidewalks have been fixed, and it gives the city a strange paradoxical feeling of archaic newness…
Where the eastern wall has fallen, landscape stretches out for exploration. If one were to go too far to the north or south, they would find themselves at sheer drops like that one to the west. But the beginnings of this landscape roll away in a great stretch of brown, spotted with patches of white snow—a plain. Here the ground is rolling.
If one were to proceed northwest, they would come upon a lake, just before plain changes into forest. It is still and quiet here, but the water is clear and the banks are gently sloping. A few trees ring around the eastern part of the lake and grow into a thicker forest as you proceed eastward.
The forest also ends up bordering most of the south from the city and onward, though a mere smattering of trees. When one reaches the forest— Here the trees grow thick, whatever paths that may have been here before grown over. You could follow the animal’s trails, if you really wanted to. Here there are animals, burrows, fallen trees grown over with moss and lichen and mushrooms, wild vegetables, maybe even an apple tree or several for once the fall rolls around.
If one successfully navigates through the forest, they will come upon the mountains. The jagged slopes reach up high, daunting, though there are ways to be found if you’re so determined. Within the mountains are caves—either naturally created or oddly man-made, though clearly abandoned.
If one were hoping for a way out over the mountains, they may be disappointed. The other side of the mountains and the very bottom trails off into another drop into murky blackness. Don’t lose your balance and go tumbling down!
No, there's nothing about communism in this post. There's also nothing biblical -- sorry, Jericho. This is all about the wall that has long surrounded Ruby City.
In particular, it's crumbled into pieces.
Wait, What? What's going on?
The tremors that characters have felt in the recent past have been the precursos to this sort of change. With the wall gone, characters are free to explore new terrain. But make no mistake. They're still trapped; the territory they are allowed to access in the encapsulated world of Ruby City has simply expanded. Beyond the wall is a large expanse of open field. Further beyond there is a large and rather idyllic lake and a dense forest leading to snow-capped mountains.
For the city itself, there are some changes as well. The river, which has long run red, has been cleared and purged in a torrent. It's probably even safe for swimming -- well, if it weren't the middle of winter. The facades of the buildings have changed in some cases, making the city a bit more uniformly in the style of the Victorian time period. The large black stone of the cathedral has been replaced by a more natural sand-colored stone, worn by time. However, the inside of most buildings is entirely the same. So if your character is living somewhere, nothing in their house changes. Nothing inside the library changes. The insides of the clinic and stores remain the same. The layout of the city has stayed the same, with two notable exceptions: the fallen wall and the appearance of an obelisk made of a deep, clear ruby in the center of the city. But in general, the buildings are exactly where they were, and houses are exactly as they used to be -- only their outside appearance may be somewhat altered.
Why the changes?
Like many roleplays, Ruby City has a constantly evolving setting. Because it is intended to be largely a sandbox, what the city contains and what the characters may discover has always been pretty much open. This is not going to change at all. Many of the best parts of this game are what players and their characters discover and shape. However, Ruby City does have an underlying plot of sorts, though it is not the driving force of the game, in the presence of the NPCs and the events that they subject the City at large to.
Back when Ruby City first came into being, a year and a half ago, Rose, the original creator of the game used a setting that she had created for an original fictional work as the basis for the city and its first pair of NPCs. When Rose stepped down first from moderating and later left the game entirely, the remaining moderators were left with something of a difficult decision. We did not know the exact direction she planned on taking the game in its inception, nor did we feel comfortable operating her original characters -- and so, the Interloper and Watcher were phased out and given an IC reason for no longer being around, namely the new kids in town.
The setting as it stood had us thinking too. For one thing, we did not want to infringe upon territory that was clearly near and dear to Rose's heart -- as original fiction creations tend to be. So we made a conscious choice to shift things slightly in the setting, out of respect to Rose and also in an effort to keep the game from suffering or stagnating at our discomfort of manipulating what had come from an original creation.
So we've made some changes -- nothing extremely major, and nothing that should change the tone or style of the game -- just enough that it is distinct from Rose's original fictional work. The game had already taken itself in a direction that made it quite different from its initial creation, so this is following its natural progress. Active Roleplays are living creatures, after all.
The biggest change by far is the breaking of the wall. There is another reason that we have chosen to do this. We wanted to open up different venues for characters to explore and interact in. Now characters have the option of doing some camping or mountain climbing should they be so inclined, and facing the assorted perils associated with these new areas. Even though the wall is gone, it has been replaced by an equally impenetrable wall of blackness and empty space that stretches to meet the sky at a distant and unreachable horizon. Like before, characters who try to escape will be met with physical resistance. Jumping or falling off the edge lands a character battered, bruised, broken and wandering in the catacombs. Characters capable of flight who venture too far out will find themselves both attacked by creatures of this nothingness and eventually crashing into an invisible force that not only knocks them out but sends them down to the catacombs to nurse their wounds and think about what they've done -- quite literally, grounding them.
Anyway, if you have any questions, please let us know in the thread below! The main point here is that we've got some exciting new areas for characters to branch off and explore, but the game itself and the makeup of the City in general remains as it has always been. The locations post has been updated to reflect the changes, and there is now a bestiary available for all the roaming nasties inside and outside of the city.
Thanks, everyone!
QUESTIONS
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Just be careful when it starts getting warmer -- thin ice can be dangerous!
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<33 Awesome work, mods! And I find it oddly sweet. Haha!