OOC PLOTTING — EVENT #1

[collectedmods]

JULY 15TH - JULY 17TH

Time in the mall thus far has been ripe with tension - between the silence, the lack of resources, and the worrying conditions outside, it’s normal for morale to be less than high. But on the early morning of the 15th, things will truly take a turn for the wicked.

Starting on July 15th, and continuing on until the following Wednesday, characters will find that there are doppelgangers of them in the mall.

The first sign of this will come on the first day they even appear: in the early morning of the 15th, just as the radioactive sun is starting to rise and characters begin to stir from slumber, they’ll find a smoking heap of… bodies of mall residents with matching clothes to boot outside the mall’s front doors, cooking in the radioactive sun. And with them? Most of what was left of the frozen rations from the food court’s freezers. No more philly steak and cheese hot pockets!

On the First Floor, much of the remaining furniture that had not been in immediate use by characters has been torn apart and thrown into the toxic waters below. Floating amongst these dismantled furniture pieces are what appear to be drowned bodies of mall residents.

Doppelgangers found on the first day of this event are more likely to resemble characters whom have survival experience, or have adapted well to the mall thus far. Inspecting any of these first bodies discovered will reveal that they are identical to mall residents down to the fingerprints. Characters may retrieve the bodies from the First Floor and even the outside (if they work quickly enough) for inspection.

JULY 17TH - JULY 21ST

Throughout the rest of the week, characters can be expected to be dealing with a myriad of trouble from these doubles:

» Witnessing doppelgangers sabotaging survival efforts. Most commonly, doppelgangers will be doing things throughout the week like destroying food, cutting power lines, ruining water piping - you name it. They are difficult to catch, as they flee whenever seen, and can contort into impossible shapes to evade capture. If captured, they will either continue struggling until they escape or are killed, or they will try to convince their captor that they are the original - and if threatened, will begin to beg for their life (convincingly.) See below for more information about the doppelgangers themselves.

» Hearing screams for help identical to the mall residents' voices. Doppelgangers will be extremely convincing actors, and will attempt to lure away and confuse resident characters by any means necessary.

» The doppelgangers become more similar to their “originals” as the week goes on. Doppelgangers will be able to act increasingly in likeness to their originals towards the end of the week. Each day they continue living, they become smarter, more convincing, more advanced at impersonating their originals. This means that if they are witnessed apart from their “original” in the latter parts of the week, they may be capable of carrying on simple conversations and acting as their “original” in order to create confusion and plant seeds of doubt over who is the “real” one.

JULY 22ND

Almost as abruptly as they’d come, the doppelgangers will meet their end on the following Wednesday: those who had not already been killed by characters present in the mall will be found dead on the morning of the 22nd.

Corpses will be in every inch of the mall, and killed in a bunch of different ways: some look to be freshly killed, as though they had been ambushed by surprise (throat slit from behind, pushed from a high area, etc.) Others seem as though they have been dead for days - and are beginning to rot. These corpses will not disappear, and will need to be cleaned up or disposed of by the characters, unless they’d like the mall to start smelling a whole lot worse. Get to work, shoppers!

More than anything, their sudden appearance and equally sudden demise does beg the question - can you trust the ones around you?

_______________________



NOTES

Welcome to Collected’s first main event! We’re going to provide some additional notes about the doppelgangers here, so everyone will know what they’re dealing with:

» Doppelgangers are identical physically to their originals.

» Doppelgangers DO NOT have the magical or supernatural abilities of their originals. They will retain only the skills and abilities related to their physiology (like physical strength), as they are biological duplicates (or mechanical, in the case of androids).

» Doppelgangers will be wearing clothes identical to the ones characters arrived in.

» There is only ONE copy of each character in the mall. This means that if you would like to have your character among the first ones discovered by characters, they won’t find another copy of their doppelganger doing things throughout the mall for the remainder of the event.

» Doppelgangers can be killed - they are not immortal and will not heal the same way characters do in the setting. However, they are extremely difficult to capture, and will flee if they are witnessed participating in sabotage, or if they are caught impersonating their original. Of note is the fact that they are strangely able to contort into impossible shapes to evade capture - bending limbs the other way, folding in half, that kind of deal.

» You are free to NPC your own doppelganger (so long as you’re not solely tagging as your double the entire event). If you’d like to handwave other characters witnessing your doppelganger doing things throughout the week, or handwave your doppelganger successfully interacting with your CR while impersonating your character, that is fine as well!

You may use this plotting post to plot out what your evil double will be up to throughout the week, where their body will be found (and what state it will be in/how it seemingly died), or what your character will be doing to stop/capture/kill them! And anything else you come up with - as always, these ideas are not exhaustive, and we want players to interpret their own ways to interact with the event.

The event log will be going up on July 15th at 6:00PM PST. For any remaining questions you have about the event - feel free to ask them HERE in the Questions comment.

Comments

QUESTIONS

[collectedmods]

[teaserving]

Are the doppelgangers traceable by using Moody Blues? Rewinding to try to figure out where they've been, where they came from, etc.

In addition, just for clarification: characters who have been surviving decently/adapting have their doppelgangers show up on the first day as a corpse. Do they additionally show up in the mall afterward for sabotaging or no?

[collectedmods]

Moody Blues will find that if it traces any of the doppelgangers, they come from and flee to the venting system. The only way to access these vents is for them to contort their bodies into crazy shapes (think Santana in Battle Tendency), so a normal person will not be able to go inside. When they're inside, they're seemingly able to move without being heard. Their entrance and exit from the venting system is as far as Moody Blues will be able to trace them - once the doppelgangers enter the vents, they won't be able to be replayed any further.

As for the characters among the first discovered because of their survival skills, it's up to player discretion if they would like their character among these. If you feel your character fits the description of someone great at surviving but you do not want them found on the first day, that is up to each player. But, if you do decide to have your character discovered on the first day as a corpse, there won’t be another copy of their doppelganger participating in sabotage throughout the mall for the remainder of the event, as there is only one copy of each character in the mall - and their doppelganger would already be dead if they were found on the first day.

[teaserving]

Thanks mods! I appreciate the answers and I'm excited for this event.

[scrambledegg]

So, mods! Two questions about remains...(grim, I know)

1) If a duplicate of a mall resident is mechanical, after it has died, could Eggman hold onto it in case it could be scrapped for spare parts later on? Like, it won't rapidly deteriorate or anything making it pointless to try and hold onto it long term, I guess is what I'm asking

2) I see the biological duplicates are perfect copies down to the fingerprints externally, but if someone were to perform a (messy, very back-alley-doctor) autopsy, would the internals be exactly the same as well? Or could anything strange be found?

[collectedmods]

1.) The mechanical doppelgangers we mentioned in the post were meant to refer to doppelgangers of characters who are in game that are androids or robots - that's our bad for not making that a little clearer! We'll update the game info to reflect that doppelgangers are only mechanical in the case of those types of characters.

If Eggman is able to get his hands on one of the doppelgangers that is of this nature, then yes, he would be able to scavenge it for parts - with player permission of course! Eggman won't be able to repair or revive the mechanical duplicate in full, though - only take parts out of it for use.

2.) If an autopsy is performed on one of the doppelgangers made of flesh, Eggman will find that the inside has organs just like a regular human would have. The only difference is that these organs do not have the usual wear-and-tear that human organs of living people would have (liver damage from alcohol, buildup of stuff in the arteries, that kind of thing). Additionally, he'll find there is nothing in the stomachs of the doppelgangers, and that there's no evidence these doppelgangers have ever eaten... anything, really!

[scrambledegg]

Perfect, thank you!

Re: QUESTIONS

[impostersyndrome]

Am I correct in assuming that doppelgangers will also have any tattoos on their body that the original character had?

[collectedmods]

Absolutely correct! Doppelgangers will look exactly like their characters upon arrival. This includes: clothing, blemishes, scars, and tattoos.

[iblistriggered]

MORE TERRIBLE QUESTIONS!!

If someone drags the bodies that were out in the elements inside to gank those sweet extra clothes, how radioactive are they? How long do those babies have to sit and decay before they're not hot anymore?

[collectedmods]

Characters will find the clothes extremely hot to the touch, and they will remain that way for at least a full day. If articles of clothing taken from the bodies outside are worn, there are couple things to note: it will give characters a terrible rash as a reaction to the radioactive qualities of the sun for a week or two, it'll smell fairly bad, and will have chunks of skin stuck to the fabric from the body cooking while wearing said clothing.

[iblistriggered]

LOVELY! thank you!

[fireglowup]

Hey mods, my reading comprehension is apparently in the tank, so to clarify: doppelgangers of characters good at surviving thus far will show up first. Do they show up first as drowned corpses, or do they simply show up first and happen to die early as a result? Put another way, is there any period of time where the good-at-survival characters can be seen alive?

[collectedmods]

Doppelgangers who first show up died early deliberately, if that makes sense! They didn't just show up as dead bodies; they showed up to deliberately take furniture into the water and take food outside, which caused them to die. They did this all in the late night/early morning of July 15th, unbeknownst to the player characters. To answer your question, this means that when they are discovered on July 15th, that first batch of doubles are only ever seen dead.

That being said, good-at-survival characters don't have to be among the first doppelgangers found. It is up to player discretion - if you feel your character fits the description of someone great at surviving but you do not want them found on the first day so that they can be seen alive on the other days, that is up to each player. We left this up to the players in order to give everyone a chance to play out what they would like!

Hopefully this answers your question!

[fireglowup]

It does, thank you!!

[aufsassig]

A little belated, but do the doppelgangers have the capacity to think and reason like their resident counterparts? The description says they're physically identical to their doubles, but would anything about their thoughts read as different if Schuldig tried to read their minds?

[collectedmods]

Even though the doubles have the capacity to think and reason like their counterparts, Schuldig will not be able to read any of the doppelganger's minds! If he manages to catch a doppelganger and tries to use his powers on them, simply nothing will happen.

[fireglowup]

New comment for this, but! Zuko will be collecting what bodies he can find and kind of arranging them (with dignified face coverings) in one of the bigger open hallways. Just to kind of keep them in order and to keep track of them. Later I am thinking he'll break in the network to ask how to dispose of them (bar any other objections), but in the meantime is there anything this might affect?

[collectedmods]

The bodies being laid out in the hallway won't really affect anything other than the ability to walk through it! In other words, nothing crazy or especially awful will happen. The bodies will simply stay as they are and decompose at the normal rate a corpse would.

[fireglowup]

Sweet, just didn't want to anger any ghosts or whatever!