[1] overview
[2] new players and characters
[3] plotline // wildcard maingroup
[4] plotline // wildcard new zealand group
[5] plotline // demonworks
[6] plotline summary
[7] closing words


[1] overview

'What is this infernal trickery? A newsletter before the two month mark?'

Except that's when you remember that technically they're supposed to be written every two weeks. Yes, hello, I didn't quite manage that at all.

But! My main motivation for writing the newsletter today come hell or high water is because I know that I won't have time or muse for it the next three weekends. Holidays - both a blessing and a curse simultaneously.

I think you'll all appreciate that I'm going to try to keep this one short.



[2] new players and characters

We technically have two new players (neither of which have played Wildcard yet, though):

1) Redezem you've probably all met by now. He's a real-life acquaintance of Morgrim's, which makes him Australian, which means Morgrim gets to stop being so lonely in her timezone, which is good.

2) Pastryface a/k/a Strudel (cream cheese, not apple!), who's unfortunately only graced our OOC chat once so far, so may not actually be returning. She does still frequent Darkmyst, though, so you never know.

As far as character's go, I was going to say there haven't been any new ones and then my inbox corrected me. Imagine that. Kor's created Ashanti Winters, somewhat in response to losing half of one of her characters to our evil scheming.



[3] plotline // wildcard maingroup
Dread bluh bluh huge bitch. Such an attention whore. This entire section is basically all him.

Four days after being asked by Dread to pass on a message, Sethiss finally does so, tentatively approaching Elizabeth. After a moment of mutual confusion passes, she asks to send a message in return, about how the network consists of genAesis servers and that 'Michael Andreas is not dead'; of course providing Sethiss would speak to Dread before she does, which she hastily adds as not wishing upon her. [#147]

Then everything starts going downhill three days later: After Dread inflicts a shared dream on Frederick and Sirena, the two trapped Citizens are at each's others throat, prompted by Sirena's misunderstanding and Frederick's thick skull preventing him from clearing it up. [#148] Initially, Sirena runs off, leaving a distrought Adrian to find his love curled up in a lavoratory. Obsessed, he uses the opportunity as an excuse to outright harm Frederick, stopped from grave bodily harm only by Erika intervening with her presence. [#149]

The Aspen Wisp, however, is not amused. Both Adrian and Frederick are detained in separate cells, Frederick for assaulting Sirena, Adrian for assaulting Frederick. Sirena gathers her courage to go see Frederick, hoping for an apology, but given the transpired events, she's merely greeted with mockery, which breaks her spirit further. [#150]

Three days after Adrian's attack of Frederick, the Aspen Wisp, having explored their avenues of potential action, calls the Citizens to a meeting. Yasmin Kasabian, Commander of the ship, gives them the option of either 'get over themselves' right that moment or be stuck in a room together (the pairs Sirena/Frederick and Elizabeth/Adrian are mentioned). A horrified Sirena tries to object, but the ruling is put into effect regardless. [#151]

Frederick and Sirena's imprisonment together at first looks like it might actually yield something, before mutual bitterness takes its toll. [#152] It prompts Dread to, one and a half days of imprisonment later, visit them both in another shared dream, where he outright demonstrates what Frederick refused to elaborate on. Rather than leave after that and let the mended friendship heal properly, he approaches Sirena... and kills her. [#153] The dream dissolves. Frederick, frantic as he discovers her death had manifested itself outside the dream just as well, calls for the help of the Aspen Wisp's staff. A debate ensues, wherein he has trouble convincing them that it hadn't been his actions that killed her.

It is at that point that she wakes, having been presumed dead for over ten minutes and verified dead for more than seven, one the ship's staff having confirmed it. As such, her so sudden return to motion and speech strike them as odd, indeed, but no one complains about the miracle. Draped in a blanket and felling oddly hollow, Sirena asks if Frederick can stay with her as she 'recovers'. [#154]

The sleep that follows takes a solid chunk worth of hours; and as she wakes, she finds Frederick sleeping on the ground next to her bed. As he, too, wakes, the two finally smooth things over. [#156]

As Dread returns, however, to pay his favourite toy, Frederick, one of his countless visits, he becomes aware that Sirena is not dead and instead possesses him and pins her down, demanding to know why she wasn't dead, then diagnosing her as such, and filing her away in the same category as Byelobog and Patches. His presence triggers network intervention, though, thoroughly sick and tired of his meddling, and Cyrex demands he leave and not return. As Dread leaves after arguing to meet for the sake of compromise, Cyrex turns his attention to the trapped Citizens, and reveals that Sirena is a Puppet-reincarnation of her Citizen-self, the best he could do. [#157]

A few days later, Frederick has a dream, not involving Dread as usual, but instead a meerkat (Nechku) who offers to trade him back Adrethyrian if he passes a message on to Dread, be that passively or actively. To demonstrate, she shows him Adrethyrian, living and breathing. [interlude 'The Messenger'] He then approaches Sirena and Elizabeth to tell them about it, somewhat disillusioned about the Citizen's ability to do anything at all. Concerned about the combination of recent events, Elizabeth bubbles forth about Dread's offer to let them communicate with the offline world, seeing the meerkat's offer as a threat to them all. Needless to say, with the audience of Sirena and Frederick, her sentiments are essentially ignored. [#158]

Dread does appear to Nechku as she intended, but their conversation does not go as planned. While he realises that she's using Cyrex's order (see interlude 'Fire with fire') to trap him as a mere excuse to talk to him, rather than vice versa, he's not impressed by her, in general, despite her humble demeanour, unsure where to place her. [interlude 'Surface Tension'] A day later, he reappears, though, and the two speak about Dread on a bit of a meta level, but Dread cuts that conversation short. [interlude 'Reflections']

Meanwhile, Adrethyrian's return has done nothing to soothe the Aspen Wisp's general paranoia about the Citizens. With his appearance of almost true-black skin and white hair as if bleached, and those near-colourless irides, and coming out of nowhere, he's been detained and is being run through much the same tests as the Citizens had been, shortly after their results came in.

The Citizens have been deemed clones, identified by mild degeneration of DNA typical for clones, but no evidence of any other issues have been found, so they have been given a provisional citizenship with Nephele. In the interest of security, the Aspen Wisp remains responsible for them - but now that they're citizens, their free lunch is over, and they've been drafted to work on the ship like any other normal person would.

The meetings between Dread and Nechku, however, have the opposite effect Nechku hoped for: Dread's anger at the network's supposed double standards spikes and as he visits Sethiss for her birthday (7th of December), his thoughts wander back to his offer. Deciding a critical mass of his distaste for the network and the Mictian Project has been reached, he opts then and there to let her speak to someone, dragging in Tui. Remembering the message Elizabeth had asked her to pass on, Sethiss does so - and goes as far as to outright thank Dread after the conversation ends. [session is work in progress]

Rather than keep quiet about his breach of rules, Dread announced it a week later (after checking with Tui to make sure that the ball had been set into proper motion), prompting Bennett to fly into a rage about it and... promptly lock him back up. Gary, fretting about how they'd agreed not to do that anymore, visits Dread in attempt to smooth it over. [session is work in progress]



[4] plotline // wildcard new zealand group

Note: The following, struck-out paragraphs happaned about two thirds of a year later, as if this newsletter had actually spanned the dates 05 JUL 2011 to 09 AUG 2011.
A series of delays put off their travelling for a few weeks - the most notable being when one of the goats ran away and when one of the little girls spiked a fever. They did, however, eventually migrate northwards and reach the city, which has proven to be a lot more dangerous due to being a lot more inhabited. They've been looking for a good place to set up permenant residence ever since.

(Don't mind the tumbleweed. This has been grossly neglected in Actual RP ^TM.)



[5] plotline // demonworks

With Andrew and Demona stuck doing a project together, things continue to heat up between them, in the negative sense of the word, and as Andrew mentions Demona's sister, she shows him the door, very much not wanting to talk about that sore spot. [#146]

Needless to say all hell breaks lose as Sirena flatlines. A frantic Jennifer, barred by her parents from using the internet (reasonably so), calls up her buddy- err, I mean, employee, Marcus, asking if he wants to take over Demonworks since she can no longer maintain it, given her digital 'house arrest'. He promises to look after it in her absence. [#147] Sick and tired of most things and flirting with the idea of ending it, Demona heads to Andrew's house to drop off her share of their project's work. He picks up on her issue in a hurry and refuses to drop the subject, finally revealing he his feelings for her with a kiss that sets her off into a rage and flight. It's shortlived, though, since she manages to trip quite movie-esquely and hurt her ankle enough that she's stuck to limping. Not wanting to go to the hospital, she reluctantly lets Andrew help her up and home. [#159]

In the meanwhile, Marcus is trying to run Demonworks, but with Jaesan gone, that proves to be quite hard. Not having exactly the same hang-ups to talk to Jaesan that Demona had, Marcus is comparatively quick to cave and contact him, asking for his help. Jeasan turns up, feeling indebted to 'an old friend' and reveals a relationship of some indeterminate nature with a woman called 'Liz'. As the conversation abruptly turns serious, Jaesan asks where Jen is and why he's running Demonworks alone at all, thus coming to learn about Sirena's death. [#160]

Still 'trapped offline', Jennifer is trying to ignore that Andrew and her are something of an item now, and flies back into her trademark rage as he sets up a date with her (she initially tries to brush it off as 'just a meeting', but the evidence speaks against that theory). Nonetheless, they settle down for a movie, but his slow, romantic style of intimacy that follows only irritates Demona, and she outright leaves in a huff. [#161]



[6] plotline summary

In Planetshine, Dread started frequenting Sirena's mind more often. Then, after Dread killed Sirena and Cyrex brought her back as a Puppet, Sirena and Frederick's friendship came out the other end of that ordeal patched back up. Needless to say, though, that Sirena doesn't quite approve of her state and has lapsed into something of an emo demeanour that could probably rival Frederick's.

Nephele provisionary citizenship has been granted to the Citizens by now, since their test results came back in, neither wholly positive nor wholly negative, but quite plausible given the sim parameters. Everyone's been more or less forced into some kind of menial task on the ship now that their free lunch is over. In parallel, though, Nechku appeared to Frederick to ask him to pass a message to Dread, which he (passively) did, resulting in Adrethyrian being returned to the Citizens as a favour, which has stirred up fresh confusion on the Aspen Wisp.

Then, Elizabeth's continued clinging to the hope that there might be some good in Dread turned out to be correct, since he's let Sethiss communicate with her brother Tui on her birthday, getting Liz's message out in the process.

Of course, that means that in the Mictian Project, the shit has hit the fan, because of course Dread can't keep his mouth shut even if it's in his own best interest. Accordingly, he was locked up in isolation until Gary bailed him back out. Again.

Equally, in Demona's plotline, Sirena's death has sparked much change, with Demona showing a more human side both to her employee, Marcus (who agreed to run Demonworks for her while she's barred from using the internet by her parents, sensibly), and to her 'stalker' slash 'boyfriend', Andrew, who goes as far as to try and formal-date her, which results in nothing but hilarity, but at least lets her be more her brash self.



[7] closing words

*eyes length of newsletter*

Well, damn. Resolution fail.