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the_plateau2021-07-13 05:32 pm
indigo_league) wrote in the_plateau2021-07-13 05:32 pm
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Lost Temple FAQ
And, for your consideration, a FAQ post for our latest summer plot.
Where can we sign up?
You can sign up your character here. The sign-up comes with a small IC application. We do not expect you to actually fully write this out (unless you really want to), so feel free to just give us an OOC summary of what your character would answer.
There are no wrong answers, but the Legendary Seekers will be placing people in teams based on their answers.
How big will the teams be?
Team size will depend slightly on how many people will sign-up, but we are aiming for small teams, preferably of around three characters so people have a chance to have some actual input and discussions without things becoming too unwieldy.
Can we pick our own teams?
For this event, we will be creating teams in order to give everybody the chance to create new CR, or at the very least, interact with some folks you normally don't have reason to interact with. So there won't be a chance to ICly request certain team placements.
The only exception to this rule is if you have some sort of OOC reason for why you'd rather not interact with a certain character/player. In that case, please drop us a PM on the mod account, and we'll try our best to keep those things in mind while creating the teams. We want this to be full of fun random CR, not for people to be forced to interact with something that may be triggering.
Until when can I sign up my characters?
Sign-ups will be open until Sunday, July 18th, 11:59 pm. We would very much appreciate it though if people could sign up as soon as possible, so we can have a better idea of how many riddles we ought to be preparing.
Can someone else sign up my character ICly?
The application system on the Seekers' website (brought to you by Squirtlespace) isn't the most technologically solid system, so yes, it would be possible to submit an application under another character's name. However, the Legendary Seekers have no authority (or interest) in forcing your character to participate, so if your character would object to having been signed up, they'd just shake their heads slightly judgementally and remove them from the list.
If you want your character to be signed up by someone else and be swept up in the crazy nonsense, feel free to coordinate that with someone OOCly, but just know that there is no way your character can be forced to participate in this.
When will this event end?
When you solve the riddles!
Essentially, this Lost Temple event is going to be our big summer-time event. Though we've got a certain event progression in mind, we've chosen not to tie this to exact dates, to give everybody a chance to engage with the event. This means we won't be operating on strict deadlines, but rather, we'll be reacting to what you will be putting forward.
My character isn't interested in riddles and puzzles.
That's fine. This event, much like all Victory Road events, is optional. Because this is going to be our big summer plot, a lot of attention will be given to these riddles (and what might come after that), but we will also be trying to have little events and swarms happen here and there for people uninterested in the event (and also those interested in it) to engage in.
Also, even if your character won't be a part of solving these riddles, that won't mean they won't have a chance to get involved in the event at later stages.
How will the riddle-solving process work? How will we know we got the right answer?
We'll be giving out more information on this when we reveal the team and give each team their riddle!
Can we ask other people for help solving the riddles?
We want to encourage you to first try and solve the riddle with your assigned teammates. However, if your characters (or you, OOCly) are running into a wall and unable to figure things out, you are allowed to reach out to others as well. Just, please give it a try with your team first is all we ask.
Are those legendary seekers based on--
Yes. Yes, they are.
I have another question!
Please ask it down below and we'll answer it as soon as possible.
After a flurry of sign-ups and many insightful responses to their questions (and some... less insightful ones), the Legendary Seekers are back and ready to present both the teams they created, as well as the riddle each team will be faced with.
To keep things more organised (and to keep this FAQ from becoming terrifyingly large), we've taken the liberty of posting the list of teams, as well as each team's assigned riddle here!
IMPORTANT - If there is any issue with the assigned teams (we did our best, but we too can make mistakes), please contact us ASAP to resolve it. Early in, we can still switch a few people around, but that will get harder once people have seriously started working on solving the riddles.
Now, we suspect you have some questions, so we took the liberty of trying to answer the most obvious ones down below.
What are the stars for?
The Legendary Seekers took the liberty of selecting one member in every team and dubbing them 'Team Captain'.
Now, hold your ponytas! Before you start getting excited about your character's newfound power (or alternative, start planning any coups!), the function of the Team Captain is essentially to be the contact point for your team. If you have any questions for the seekers or want to offer a solution to your riddle, please do so via the Team Captain. Similarly, should the Legendary Seekers have any further information for your team, they will contact the Team Captain to pass on the message. This is really just to keep things streamlined onour the Seekers' end. Keeping track of a dozen Team Captains is a lot easier than keeping track of 40-odd individuals!
So, alas, no great power for you. But you'll get a small badge? Won't that be nice?
Would my character have gotten all the riddles?
No, that's just to make things simple for us.
Your character would've been contacted by the Legendary seekers, and received information on the team they are in, and the specific riddle they've been assigned. Everything else would have to be communicated between the characters themselves.
Can we change the team captains?
Generally speaking, there really shouldn't be a need to, as all the team captain does is submit comments to the Seeker post, but if you really have a pressing reason to do so, please let us know via PM.
So, how should we proceed now?
Now that you have your team and riddle, it's time to start puzzling!
Broadly speaking, each riddle will hint at both a location and an Item that can be found there. Your characters' job will be to puzzle this out, go to the location in question and retrieve the item, then submit it to the Legendary seekers. Once all objects have been retrieved, this should allow for the Legendary Seekers to summon the Lost Temple. Well, in theory, at least.
There are no threading requirements for this part of the plot, so you are free to work out the answer of the riddle in any way you wish. You may do so completely OOCly and handwave the IC parts. You may play out part of the IC process (talking about the riddle, retrieving the item). All ways are valid ways!
When your team believes you have solved the riddle and figured out both the location and item, you can submit your solution here, to be judged by the Seekers. Here you'll receive some feedback on whether your solution was correct (hooray) or false (back to the drawing board). If you were wrong, no worries! Just think it over again, and who knows, the Seekers may give you a little hint too.
Please note that the items referenced in the riddles are not specifically limited to items that can be obtained in the games. So don't feel like you should have to pull up an item list from the games and fit your answer to something on there! You might very well be asked to collect a certain leaf or an entire berry bush, despite those things never appearing as collectable items in the games.
There is one exception to this, and that is the team that get the riddle related to the location of the Lost Temple Altar. They obviously won't need to bring back a specific item for the Seekers, and in their case, reporting where they believe the altar to be is all they need to do.
There are no hard deadlines for this part of the event. We want to give everybody the time solve these riddles in peace. Of course, this is meant to be a summer time event, and there are other parts of the plot yet to come, so if any one team is really stuck on the solution, we'll reach out to them, but this entire plot is very much meant to be flexible in nature.
Wait! How do the Legendary Seekers know which solutions are correct?!
They have their means. You didn't think all those odd devices were just for show, right?
Hey, are we going to get any rewards for solving these riddles?
Just a sense of pride and accomplishment.
This plot will involve travelling, but my character doesn't have the means to. What now?
We've tried to create teams consisting of both new arrivals and long-time residents. This should, ideally, mean that your team members will be able to help out any newer characters that don't have the means to travel (for example, by lending them certain pokemon). However should you run into any difficulties here, the Legendary Seekers are willing to lend you some of their travelling pokemon to help out.
You may handwave this interaction.
This riddle doesn't make any sense, we don't know where we need to go!
It wouldn't be a good defence if the riddles were too easy! Luckily, there are some options for you.
The Legendary Seekers did their best to translate the ancient words into a more modern tongue, but it is hard to always get every nuance across. If your team is stuck on their riddle, there is an option to ask the Legendary Seekers for help. Mind you, they don't have the time to solve the entire riddle for you, but with the knowledge of the actual ancient wording, they might be able to give you a hint or two as to where you might find the solution.
Another option is to ask your fellow players for help! We'd like to encourage you to try and solve things with your group first, but if you are not making any headway, it's absolutely fine to reach out to your fellow players and see if they have any thoughts on the matter. If the Legendary Seekers are crowd-sourcing dealing with this prophecy, there is no reason why you can't do that as well!
An issue has popped up inside our team. What should we do?
Please PM us ASAP and we will help you figure out a solution for whatever your problem may be.
I have other questions!
Please ask them below! To keep things well organised, we've added a thread specifically for questions related to this part of the plot.
Temple exploration!
Temple Exploration!!
So, how will this work?
Essentially, it all comes down to this.
We found the Lost Temple, but it turns out that to get into the inner sanctuary, we need to unlock the door, which the Legendary Seekers are positive can be done by finding all the pieces of the stone slab that obviously is supposed to go in the hole in front of the door.
Because one piece of it was found inside the temple, and honestly, none of the seekers ever remember seeing anything like this anywhere else, they believe that the rest of the pieces must have been hidden in the temple below. Possibly as a safety measure to stop anyone from getting the treasure inside the sanctuary.
Seeing as they all helped out so wonderfully during the riddle solving, the Seekers will be asking everybody to please go explore the temple below and find all of the pieces. And hey, they are not picky. They will take any help they can get right now, so even if you didn't participate in the riddling event, you can most certainly participate right now.
Okay, so my character will go and--
Hold on, the Legendary Seekers will be placing one condition on anyone going down into the temple.
It's... The Buddy System.
Essentially, to limit the risk of anyone getting overwhelmed or lost down in the temple below (see, they did learn something on the Whirl Islands!) characters will have to go down in teams. Nobody knows what is down there, after all. Could just be a completely abandoned and very quiet temple, could be full of traps. Who knows. Best be prepared!
How big will the teams be? Can we pick them ourselves?
The Legendary Seekers will be requesting characters to go down in teams of two to five individuals. You are both free to form your own teams and to sign up for random team placements.
Characters will be able to explore the temple as often as they want (within certain limits), so you can both enjoy exploring with your close CR and with random people if you wish.
Exactly how will this exploration part be run?
We'll be handling things like this --
The underwater part of the Temple can broadly be separated into three sections. Each section will have a different difficulty level in terms of pokemon that can be encountered there, so whether you are new to the game or an old hat, there should be some part of the temple you can explore.
Teams will sign up to explore a specific section of Temple. We will be responding to each of these sign-ups with a bit of flavour text of what the teams ends up encountering, any treasure they may find, and if they are lucky enough to retrieve a part of the stone slab. Characters will only be able to go on one exploration at a time, so you will not be able to sign up for another exploration until the results of your first one come in. Please keep this in mind when plotting out teams.
ICly you can expect every exploration to take several hours, and each exploration may involve running into the pokemon living in the temple, dealing with traps or perhaps discovering small bit of lost temple lore.
You are free to thread out the explorations if you want though it is not a requirement for taking part in this event.
Hold on! Treasure?!
Characters will be able to find treasures down in the Temple! For those that were around for our Prom two years ago, it'll be handled much the same as castle prom where we will be randomising big and interesting (and sometimes just kooky) treasures. Examples from last time included things like the Holey Grill, a definitely cursed doll, and a Meowth-sized armour.
Obviously, being that this is a temple, the types of treasures we'll be coming up with will be more thematically appropriate towards that, but you won't know what they'll be until you find them. In addition to these bigger treasures, teams will also be able to find smaller treasures (such as Pearls or Gold Nuggets) that can be sold for some money.
In order to keep the number of crazy treasures we need to come up with somewhat reasonable, every character will only be able to enter in the treasure gacha once, something which you can note on your sign-up form.
Will the explorations definitely involve fighting?
It is a possibility.
Essentially, there are pokemon living down in the temple, and while they are not necessarily excessively violent, they have not dealt with humans in a long time, and having people trespass on their homes might startle them. As a result, your characters might end up battling, but hey, if you got clever ways to avoid that, that's also fine.
Of course, you will also be able to catch these pokemon. And who knows, you might end up encountering some pokemon that are normally very hard to find.
If your character is not the best at battling, they can still participate by joining up with characters who eat twelve battles for breakfast every morning. That's the beauty of team work!
How many pieces of the stone slab are there?
This is not something your characters will be able to know ICly, as the pieces differ in size, making it very hard to make any kind of estimate.
OOCly, we can tell you there are 25 pieces still to be found. It'll probably take a bit to find all those pieces, so expect this exploration to take up much of August.
Not every team that goes exploring will necessarily find one, and some teams may find multiple pieces. It's all up to fate.
That's Unown writing on those slabs, isn't it?
Isn't it always Unown writing in these games?
Shouldn't there be actually licensed archaeologists exploring this incredible find?
Shouldn't ten-year-olds be in school instead of camping rough, earning money through making small animals fight, and dealing with criminal organisations?
Where can we sign up to go exploring?
This can be done here! This page will also include some additional information on each temple section and the pokemon that can be encountered within.
Will there be any deadlines for exploring?
No hard ones. Essentially, the option to explore the temple will remain open for as long as there are pieces of the slab still to be found. Once every piece has been found, we'll enter into the next phase of the plot.
We'll keep an updated count of how many pieces have been found and how many are still left to be discovered on the exploration page.
My character is nowhere near the Islands, can they still get involved?
The Legendary Seekers will be arranging transport for everyone who wants to come and explore the temple. You may handwave this interaction.
I have some other questions.
Please ask them below. As before, we've made a top level specifically for questions about this part of the event.
Please note that we will be updating this FAQ as the plot evolves, so keep an eye on it as new developments... develop.
Where can we sign up?
There are no wrong answers, but the Legendary Seekers will be placing people in teams based on their answers.
How big will the teams be?
Can we pick our own teams?
The only exception to this rule is if you have some sort of OOC reason for why you'd rather not interact with a certain character/player. In that case, please drop us a PM on the mod account, and we'll try our best to keep those things in mind while creating the teams. We want this to be full of fun random CR, not for people to be forced to interact with something that may be triggering.
Until when can I sign up my characters?
Can someone else sign up my character ICly?
If you want your character to be signed up by someone else and be swept up in the crazy nonsense, feel free to coordinate that with someone OOCly, but just know that there is no way your character can be forced to participate in this.
When will this event end?
Essentially, this Lost Temple event is going to be our big summer-time event. Though we've got a certain event progression in mind, we've chosen not to tie this to exact dates, to give everybody a chance to engage with the event. This means we won't be operating on strict deadlines, but rather, we'll be reacting to what you will be putting forward.
My character isn't interested in riddles and puzzles.
Also, even if your character won't be a part of solving these riddles, that won't mean they won't have a chance to get involved in the event at later stages.
How will the riddle-solving process work? How will we know we got the right answer?
Can we ask other people for help solving the riddles?
Are those legendary seekers based on--
I have another question!
After a flurry of sign-ups and many insightful responses to their questions (and some... less insightful ones), the Legendary Seekers are back and ready to present both the teams they created, as well as the riddle each team will be faced with.
To keep things more organised (and to keep this FAQ from becoming terrifyingly large), we've taken the liberty of posting the list of teams, as well as each team's assigned riddle here!
IMPORTANT - If there is any issue with the assigned teams (we did our best, but we too can make mistakes), please contact us ASAP to resolve it. Early in, we can still switch a few people around, but that will get harder once people have seriously started working on solving the riddles.
Now, we suspect you have some questions, so we took the liberty of trying to answer the most obvious ones down below.
What are the stars for?
Now, hold your ponytas! Before you start getting excited about your character's newfound power (or alternative, start planning any coups!), the function of the Team Captain is essentially to be the contact point for your team. If you have any questions for the seekers or want to offer a solution to your riddle, please do so via the Team Captain. Similarly, should the Legendary Seekers have any further information for your team, they will contact the Team Captain to pass on the message. This is really just to keep things streamlined on
So, alas, no great power for you. But you'll get a small badge? Won't that be nice?
Would my character have gotten all the riddles?
Your character would've been contacted by the Legendary seekers, and received information on the team they are in, and the specific riddle they've been assigned. Everything else would have to be communicated between the characters themselves.
Can we change the team captains?
So, how should we proceed now?
Broadly speaking, each riddle will hint at both a location and an Item that can be found there. Your characters' job will be to puzzle this out, go to the location in question and retrieve the item, then submit it to the Legendary seekers. Once all objects have been retrieved, this should allow for the Legendary Seekers to summon the Lost Temple. Well, in theory, at least.
There are no threading requirements for this part of the plot, so you are free to work out the answer of the riddle in any way you wish. You may do so completely OOCly and handwave the IC parts. You may play out part of the IC process (talking about the riddle, retrieving the item). All ways are valid ways!
When your team believes you have solved the riddle and figured out both the location and item, you can submit your solution here, to be judged by the Seekers. Here you'll receive some feedback on whether your solution was correct (hooray) or false (back to the drawing board). If you were wrong, no worries! Just think it over again, and who knows, the Seekers may give you a little hint too.
Please note that the items referenced in the riddles are not specifically limited to items that can be obtained in the games. So don't feel like you should have to pull up an item list from the games and fit your answer to something on there! You might very well be asked to collect a certain leaf or an entire berry bush, despite those things never appearing as collectable items in the games.
There is one exception to this, and that is the team that get the riddle related to the location of the Lost Temple Altar. They obviously won't need to bring back a specific item for the Seekers, and in their case, reporting where they believe the altar to be is all they need to do.
There are no hard deadlines for this part of the event. We want to give everybody the time solve these riddles in peace. Of course, this is meant to be a summer time event, and there are other parts of the plot yet to come, so if any one team is really stuck on the solution, we'll reach out to them, but this entire plot is very much meant to be flexible in nature.
Wait! How do the Legendary Seekers know which solutions are correct?!
Hey, are we going to get any rewards for solving these riddles?
This plot will involve travelling, but my character doesn't have the means to. What now?
You may handwave this interaction.
This riddle doesn't make any sense, we don't know where we need to go!
The Legendary Seekers did their best to translate the ancient words into a more modern tongue, but it is hard to always get every nuance across. If your team is stuck on their riddle, there is an option to ask the Legendary Seekers for help. Mind you, they don't have the time to solve the entire riddle for you, but with the knowledge of the actual ancient wording, they might be able to give you a hint or two as to where you might find the solution.
Another option is to ask your fellow players for help! We'd like to encourage you to try and solve things with your group first, but if you are not making any headway, it's absolutely fine to reach out to your fellow players and see if they have any thoughts on the matter. If the Legendary Seekers are crowd-sourcing dealing with this prophecy, there is no reason why you can't do that as well!
An issue has popped up inside our team. What should we do?
I have other questions!
Temple exploration!
So, how will this work?
We found the Lost Temple, but it turns out that to get into the inner sanctuary, we need to unlock the door, which the Legendary Seekers are positive can be done by finding all the pieces of the stone slab that obviously is supposed to go in the hole in front of the door.
Because one piece of it was found inside the temple, and honestly, none of the seekers ever remember seeing anything like this anywhere else, they believe that the rest of the pieces must have been hidden in the temple below. Possibly as a safety measure to stop anyone from getting the treasure inside the sanctuary.
Seeing as they all helped out so wonderfully during the riddle solving, the Seekers will be asking everybody to please go explore the temple below and find all of the pieces. And hey, they are not picky. They will take any help they can get right now, so even if you didn't participate in the riddling event, you can most certainly participate right now.
Okay, so my character will go and--
It's... The Buddy System.
Essentially, to limit the risk of anyone getting overwhelmed or lost down in the temple below (see, they did learn something on the Whirl Islands!) characters will have to go down in teams. Nobody knows what is down there, after all. Could just be a completely abandoned and very quiet temple, could be full of traps. Who knows. Best be prepared!
How big will the teams be? Can we pick them ourselves?
Characters will be able to explore the temple as often as they want (within certain limits), so you can both enjoy exploring with your close CR and with random people if you wish.
Exactly how will this exploration part be run?
The underwater part of the Temple can broadly be separated into three sections. Each section will have a different difficulty level in terms of pokemon that can be encountered there, so whether you are new to the game or an old hat, there should be some part of the temple you can explore.
Teams will sign up to explore a specific section of Temple. We will be responding to each of these sign-ups with a bit of flavour text of what the teams ends up encountering, any treasure they may find, and if they are lucky enough to retrieve a part of the stone slab. Characters will only be able to go on one exploration at a time, so you will not be able to sign up for another exploration until the results of your first one come in. Please keep this in mind when plotting out teams.
ICly you can expect every exploration to take several hours, and each exploration may involve running into the pokemon living in the temple, dealing with traps or perhaps discovering small bit of lost temple lore.
You are free to thread out the explorations if you want though it is not a requirement for taking part in this event.
Hold on! Treasure?!
Obviously, being that this is a temple, the types of treasures we'll be coming up with will be more thematically appropriate towards that, but you won't know what they'll be until you find them. In addition to these bigger treasures, teams will also be able to find smaller treasures (such as Pearls or Gold Nuggets) that can be sold for some money.
In order to keep the number of crazy treasures we need to come up with somewhat reasonable, every character will only be able to enter in the treasure gacha once, something which you can note on your sign-up form.
Will the explorations definitely involve fighting?
Essentially, there are pokemon living down in the temple, and while they are not necessarily excessively violent, they have not dealt with humans in a long time, and having people trespass on their homes might startle them. As a result, your characters might end up battling, but hey, if you got clever ways to avoid that, that's also fine.
Of course, you will also be able to catch these pokemon. And who knows, you might end up encountering some pokemon that are normally very hard to find.
If your character is not the best at battling, they can still participate by joining up with characters who eat twelve battles for breakfast every morning. That's the beauty of team work!
How many pieces of the stone slab are there?
OOCly, we can tell you there are 25 pieces still to be found. It'll probably take a bit to find all those pieces, so expect this exploration to take up much of August.
Not every team that goes exploring will necessarily find one, and some teams may find multiple pieces. It's all up to fate.
That's Unown writing on those slabs, isn't it?
Shouldn't there be actually licensed archaeologists exploring this incredible find?
Where can we sign up to go exploring?
Will there be any deadlines for exploring?
We'll keep an updated count of how many pieces have been found and how many are still left to be discovered on the exploration page.
My character is nowhere near the Islands, can they still get involved?
I have some other questions.
Please note that we will be updating this FAQ as the plot evolves, so keep an eye on it as new developments... develop.