JANUARY BULLETIN

[vestigemods]

JANUARY BULLETIN

► IT'S ALWAYS 2020 IN THE CONTAINMENT ZONE

Happy New Years, horrorfam! ✨ And thank you all for 6 awesome months here in Vestige. Y'all have really been just such a great playerbase, so encouraging and patient in all of my modding endeavors - and modding here has been so fun, even when it has been work. The game feels like a little bitty family fueled by suffering and I love that.

This bulletin is gonna be short and sweet, for the most part - especially the 'this month in vestige' section, since there's functionally only a week of it to play around with properly. But without further ado!

LOOKING TO 2021 IN VESTIGE

The last six months have honestly just been me unlearning conventional modding and figuring out exactly what's expected of a musebox-game like Vestige. I think that as of our poll in December, we've figured out what the game needs in terms of event pacing, and we'll get to watch how that shakes out over the next handful of months.

• WHAT TO EXPECT FROM VESTIGE? - Since everyone seems to have had fun with what we've done so far, basically just more of the same (psych, monster, and body horror) in new and diverse flavors! We're already seeing some mysteries and even mild NPC activity creep into the game in a couple of places, which will possibly continue to develop over time. Ideally we'll also see a few player plots in the roster, if anyone happens to have any. Equally ideally, we'll be seeing a growth in the playerbase within the next few months as we open it up to non-invite-only applicants at times, but this is less something I can outright predict.


• WHAT TO EXPECT FROM YOUR MOD? - Grad school hell has only just begun, but none of my impending quarters should be nearly as hellish as the Fall one (this one, for example, is 3 classes rather than 4.5) - so between that, the new event pacing, and my increasing ability to manage my time, I should be able to be more on-top of things than I was before. Otherwise, just generally expect me to continue to try to shape the game in ways that make it easier/more fun for y'all as players, based on the feedback I get.


• GOALS FOR IMPROVEMENT - Aside from the 'we super duper need fresh blood in here' ongoing struggle, I'd also love to find a way to make the non-event stuff more appealing to engage with (map exploration, diving into the various alluded mysteries, the Buy Shit system, etc). This may have its root in the fact that the pacing made engagement outside of events more difficult to find time for, so we'll see about that. Otherwise, that's everything coming to mind here!


• HOW YOU CAN HELP? - Invite your friends!! (Especially those with non-Untamed/MDZS characters, since that cast is currently unofficially capped until the game gets bigger.) Sincerely, that's the best thing you can do right now, that and doing your best to tag around so that the comms show the same level of interest that our Discord does. Barring that, I feel like Vestige has benefitted a lot from the feedback I've gotten from the playerbase - so please, don't hesitate to give me feedback if you have any! Whether it's something I could do better or even just a suggestion for consideration (like a type of event you think people would do well with, for example).

SETTING UPDATE: BRAND NEW PHONE APPS

Since Lana wished for phone apps, we've got 'em! I'll be migrating this list into the FAQ soon, and will continually update it as I get new phone app suggestions. (So like, hit me up if you want a new app and I'll see what i can do.)
• YIKES - Basically Vine/Tiktok meets Snapchat. You can make 30-second videos of whatever stupid ass shit sounds good to you at the time. You can overlay it with songs, filters that make you pretty or change your face, voice-changers, etc. You can re-film your video as many times as you want, but it automatically posts to the network or a pre-specified recipient when you click 'done', so. Godspeed, you crazy filter-loving bastards. (To utilize OOCly, feel free to just.... make a regular network post or inbox tag-in and specify somehow that it's a Yikes app pic/video.)


• CHICKCHUCK - A mindless phone game where you throw cute animated baby chickens at things, Angry Birds style.


• SAUSAGEFREE - A ladies-only gacha with plot, character-leveling, weapons, accessories, and very strong (often overt) lesbian overtones, but not in a creepy male-gaze kind of way. Blame Luusi. (If you end up bullshitting any of the story elements, please let Trace know so she can cobble together whatever stupid ass adventure story y'all make up for this.)


• NEF (NOT ENOUGH FISH) - Because 'Plenty Of Fish' is taken, Christian, and also a straight-up lie. This is basically Tinder except the Technicians wrote your page for you. (To utilize OOCly, we actually now have a Not Enough Fish page for everyone to link their bios. Feel free to ask any questions on this top-level!)

ANNOUNCEMENTS OF VARYING IMPORTANCE

• GAME CHANGE: EVENT PACING - As mentioned above, y'all voted to shift our event pacing to bi-monthly instead of every month! Beginning this month, events will now occur on odd-numbered months, with very minor/non-critical happenings occurring on the even-numbered months. If this still proves to be too much, I'll scale the off-months down even further, but I'd like to err toward giving something to play with. (For a little more info, consult December's Not-Bulletin.)


• NO-INVITE APPLICATION PERIOD - The period of time in which Vestige lifts its 'invite-only' restriction has been moved to sometime in February, since January is an odd month (as you'll see below). In the interim, I plan to clean up the FAQ page + write up an 'Interested in Vestige?' briefing post re: what the game is, the pacing, etc., which y'all will then be invited to comment on and share your overall "What would you tell a potential applicant about Vestige?" thoughts.


• MEME: VESTIGE BINGO! - We've got a Vestige Bingo meme fresh off the grill, where you toss up your list of Shit You Want To Do In 2021 and then help each other plot to reach Bingo (even if you never fuck around with making an actual bingo sheet). I hope y'all have fun with it!


• USELESS NEW PAGE: DATING(?) APP - As mentioned above, the Not Enough Fish dating(?) app (or shaming app, it's honestly hard to tell) now has a page for you to link your characters' profiles/bios, complete with a summary of the app + a guide on setting up the coding. So that's a thing.


• A QUICK REQUEST! - Hey, all! I just wanted to drop a line real quick in here and ask that folks make sure to reply to the Housing page re: where their character's living. I know a couple of people have claimed non-cabin/apartment buildings, and I especially need to know something like that for the sake of planning for future events.


• SHH! THERE'S A SECRET NEW HELPER MOD - And she's doing all the excellent page maintenance and reminding me of things I've missed in my own modding and it has been wonderful and I just wanted to toss her a little love and credit. (It might be Maus. Shhhh.)

JANUARY IN VESTIGE

OVERVIEW.

January is a bit of an odd month, with half of it being... more-or-less an overly long nap. (See: EVENTS FOR JANUARY below.) Between that and the blizzard which follows, it's honestly going to be February again before the poor residents of the containment zone see any kind of return to normalcy - but shit be like that sometimes.

WEATHER.

Cold as balls. Who knows what the weather was like while everyone was asleep, but only at the tail end of the month do we see anything but a truly harrowing amount of snow. Fortunately, the snow begins to melt away consistently starting on the 23rd. Unfortunately, there's enough of it piled up that not even the following stretch of sunny skies can melt it all that quickly.

WILDLIFE.

The plants, from what can be discerned, are doing the best they can under the onslaught of snow. Not much more can be discerned until it melts some. As for the animals: Absent, quite conspicuously. No birds, no fish, no raccoons under the porch... At least until after the blizzard, at which point they begin to sparsely trickle back, acting about as normal as they ever have.

RESOURCES.

If you can reach Foodland, you'll find that it has an unusual surplus of blackout supplies. Flashlights and batteries, oil lamps, even a few generators with fuel. What a shame that most people won't make it to the grocery store until well after the blackout has passed.

As for the gas station, well....

ANOMALIES.

Though there are no new anomalies this month for obvious reasons, it's worth drawing a moment's attention to Ellie's gas station discovery.

EVENTS FOR JANUARY

ANNUAL MAINTENANCE (OPTIONAL) EVENT FLASHBACK, JAN 3RD - 16TH

At 5 AM on January 3rd, the containment zone goes into a brief period of annual maintenance. All characters fall into what amounts to a coma for the duration of two weeks until the 16th.

Within this coma, many characters experience some... troubling dreams. Essentially (since trying to write this in a narrative way confused a lot of the details so fuck it), they spend that two weeks within a nebulous shared dreamscape with a tenuous concept of time and are able to experience various past Vestige events/unpleasant happenings as if they're currently occurring. Maybe you missed an event and want to experience it! Maybe you had two different ideas for how an event might go and would like a chance to play out the one you didn't go with! It's kind of freeform and do-your-own-thing, so just fuck around with it however you please. It's also 100% up to you whether or not your character recognizes it as a dream.

Alternatively, if you're not burning to play with any of the past events, the coma means this can be skipped entirely with no IC 'time is passing and I'm missing things' consequences. Those who choose to are fully welcome to just use this two-week period as a freebie to catch up on backtagging from before the event pacing chilled out. Your characters just had a nice, dreamless coma instead.

When everyone wakes up on the 16th, they'll find their limbs a bit stiff and weak and their eyes a bit crusty around the edges, but overall they'll be in pretty much the same state they were in when the maintenance began. As if they've simply overslept one night rather than laying unconscious for a fortnight.

HEY, WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS? WEATHER EVENT, JAN 20TH - 22ND

When the residents of the containment zone collectively awoke on the 16th, they may have noticed that the snow was... a little bit deeper. Nothing to worry about yet! It just seemed like it was starting to melt at the end of the year, and now it's back up to knee-high and counting. Maybe it'll just kind of stay this deep, regardless of how much it snows. Y'know, like it did in December?

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. On the 20th, a gale-force blizzard kicks in and piles the snow ever-higher with no sign of stopping - and to make matters worse, just before sundown all electricity to the cabins starts to flicker for an hour or so, then cuts out and doesn't return. The same happens to the town's electrical grid sometime closer to dawn.

This blackout lingers through the 21st and into the 22nd, cold seeping in through the windows and cracks as you huddle near the fire or generator-run space heater and hope for the best... But even the best isn't pleasant in the slightest. The lack of internal heat lets the doors and windows freeze shut, and snow piles high enough around the house's exterior that they'd have to climb out an upstairs window in order to exit. Not only is it cold as hell, but everyone's more-or-less stuck in it for now.

The blizzard lets up mid-day on the 22nd and the power finally flickers back on that evening, but some cabins/apartments/buildings may find that it's less consistent than others, continuing to flicker dangerously throughout the next day or so. But while the blizzard is over and the sun shines brightly overhead, the snow is still piled quite high around any given building, and characters will unfortunately be left to dig themselves (and each other) out of their homes. Fortunately, that does seem to be the last of the snowing, and what remains will melt away over the rest of January and beginning of February.

As usual, toss any questions into the top-level below! A log should be going up in the next day or so encompassing all of January, with a top-level within it to contain all dreamscape shenanigans.