A Sound of Thunder is coming!
If you’re reading this it means that the rest of staff didn’t hang me up by my ankles and skin me alive for coming up with this storyline idea. What you’re about to see in April is the culmination of a storyline I’ve been working on developing since November of last year.
A Sound of Thunder will be Volume VI of String Theory MUX, and will feature a very different method of storytelling that we experimented with in Volume IV: A Taste of Armageddon, which are stories set in different time periods.
You may not have read the logs set in the bleak, virus-destroyed future of the Road to Ruin storyline, last volume, but you’ve all likely seen the Heroes episode “Five Years Gone”, or the marvel comic book series “Days of Futures Past” which explores the particulars of time travel.
You’re about to experience it first-hand.
Come April 1st (and no this isn’t a joke) we will be opening up a look into String Theory’s story ten years in the making. For the entire month of April, there will be a separate series of storylines happening in the spring of 2019.
But unlike the Road to Ruin, where only one or two people were able to participate, everyone will get a chance to partake in this event. Starting today, we will be allowing you to use the +request feature to draft up a version of one character that you will be able to play ten years in the future. This character must be a pre-existing one already approved on String-Theory MUX, and we’ll go over what you should include in the +request later on.
So what is this future ten years from now like? It’s not dark, it’s not grim, in fact it’s quite idyllic. Hinted at and foreshadowed for the last few months in prophetic paintings and dreams, the Bright Future is a topsy-turvy take on the grim and gritty futures often portrayed in science fiction. Your future turns out good, but can it stay that way?
There are two options for people wanting to be involved in this huge event. One is to simply +request for a future version of one of your characters, the other is to +request that you be able to travel from the past, to the future with one of your pre-existing characters. However, there is a stipulation behind this; you have to be at the Moab Federal Penitentiary for that opportunity to happen.
Anyone wishing to get in on this possible journey to the future can still get to Moab. We can either off-camera assume your character is captured by Homeland Security, or scene out a whole capture scenario featuring everyone’s favorite HomeSec agent Carmichael.
We will be allowing for eight people (not including the man who will take you there!) to travel into the future from the past. Now we might opt to expand this number, depending on people who have particularly good ideas for what to do in the future or the like, so don’t get discouraged, talk to us first!
As for what we’re expecting from people applying for ten-year-older versions of their character, we would like to see a synopsis of where the character has been and what they’ve been up to in the last ten years. A paragraph or two will suffice, but if you wish to go into more detail, all the better.
Also please put in the +request any changes or evolutions to your character’s ability you’d like to explore in the future as well.
Now this doesn’t mean all the action will be in the future – far from it. If you’ve ever read the classic sci-fi novella “A Sound of Thunder” which this volume is inspired by, you’ll know it deals with the repercussions of traveling back in time, not forward.
There will be a great deal of action going on in the “present” of 2009, and many storylines to follow if you don’t even want to get involved in the future. Remember, the future might not interest you –- we want to see people applying for characters to travel to or be from the future that have a personal story they would like to pursue. Show a possibility for your character that might not come to pass in the present, an ideal future where their life has changed.
This is an opportunity to foreshadow events that will come to pass, and really explore your characters and everyone else.
Now I know asking you to choose one character is like asking someone which arm they would prefer to lose; it’s a difficult question, so don’t worry, we understand.
We’ve set up a special forum on the string-theory wiki to help coordinate people wanting to make plans with their future selves, to see who wants to be connected to who, who ended up marrying who and having their babies –- etc.
Also, if you absolutely, positively must have one more character in the future, talk to us. Explain your idea and run it by us, and if you have something we feel is a really compelling story to tell, then we may just allow some exceptions to the rule –- we like good stories, and we like reading them even more!
You'll find on the top navigation bar a new tab with all of the information on the “Bright Future” setting.
You will be allowed to have 1 new character icon per character in the future created for you, and you can request a specific picture by adding a link to it in your +request application. You will also be allowed a new wiki page for your future character, using the following naming convention:
thunder:name (eg: thunder:peter, thunder:eileen)
Also, tag these character pages with 'thunder'.
You will use the same character bit for all scenes in game (please use +tp to change your status if you're RPing in the future), and while the grid itself will not be redesigned for the month of the future, you will be able to find descriptions and images of all major locations in the future New York City. If a location from the past isn’t detailed, feel free to make one up, or ask the staff!
The Coming Storm
But a bright future wouldn’t be anything without dark villains. And there is a group of especially dangerous individuals who will be making a journey from the future to the past, to attempt to change the course of history itself -– and they could be you!
We have four special adoptable characters available for A Sound of Thunder. Each of these special adoptables does not count against your total characters, they are in a category all of their own, like Feature Characters, and will be held to an even higher standard. If you cannot reliably be here at least every other day with this character, do not apply for it.
These characters will be central to the 2009 storyline, and their role is crucial to the plot. There will be four NPC villains to accompany them, bringing the total of people coming back in time to eight (not counting the man taking them there.)
These adoptables are roughly pre-defined in gender and ability, and one is a Feature Character from Season 3. Their powers must remain as-written, though there can be tweaks made if you have specific ideas, just talk to Manhattan about it.
These Special Adoptables will operate under very specific rules. You can RP with them as much as you like, but at the end of the Sound of Thunder storyline (likely sometime in May) they will need to be retired, unless you happen to have an open slot of the proper type, at which point you may keep them indefinitely. You will need an open OC Evolved slot for all of the special adoptables except for Doyle, in which case you will need an open FC slot — THIS IS ONLY IF YOU WISH TO KEEP THEM PERMANENTLY.
Also note that there will be present day versions of these characters, and when you go through the full approval process for these special adoptables, we will discuss what that means for you and how it will be handled.
Each Special Adoptable is detailed on the wiki at the following links:
(Puppetry) http://string-theory.wikidot.com/thunder:Doyle
(Electromagnetic Replication) http://string-theory.wikidot.com/thunder:Niles
(Technopath) http://string-theory.wikidot.com/thunder:Reed
(Forcefield Generation) http://string-theory.wikidot.com/thunder:April
If you wish to apply for one of these four Special Adoptables (who will be operating entirely in 2009) please create the character and run them through chargen. Please note that their abilities are already statted out, and if you wish to change anything about them, discuss it with Manhattan rather than adding it directly to their +ability field.
+requests for future characters or characters traveling from the past must be filed no later than 11:00pm Eastern on Saturday, March 28th to ensure that we have sufficient time to approve all late-appers before opening the doorway to the future.
All full applications for Special Adoptables must be filed before March 22nd, 2009.
At the end of April, when the characters who journeyed to the future return to their own native time, the main storyline in the Bright Future will come to a close, and we will no longer be GMing scenes there. You are free to backdate logs you may not have had time to finish, but you will not be allowed to post scenes that transpired past the date of the time travelers returning home.
We hope you enjoy this exciting new volume of String Theory, and we hope that you whole-heartedly enjoy the fun stories we’re working hard to put together for you all.
If you have any questions about the Bright Future or A Sound of Thunder at all, don’t hesitate to ask us, but please be patient because I imagine by the time I’m through posting this notice, we’ll be buried under a black sea of pages.
Happy Plotting,
Manhattan.