Throughout the week, those that managed to escape the moon back to the city were able to return to their relatively normal lives aside from the construction of what were clearly four gigantic weapons, on the city skyline, with one in each ward. The Stars refused to communicate about what they were building for, or why they were pointed at the sky. The more terrifying possibility was that they couldn't communicate it.
Until one night, a week later? The moon shone even brighter than normal. Too bright, really, almost like...
WHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIR!
At the same time, all four of the constructed weapons whirred to life, and after gathering blue light, they fired beams of this light towards the moon above. But their goal seemingly hadn't been to destroy the moon and instead those four beams of light clashed with one much larger beam of white that seemingly had fired from the moon itself. The clashing beams from the city held back the beam from the moon, and neither side appeared to give any quarter. Eventually the light drained from the sky, leaving nothing but the moon shining above and cloaking the entire island in perpetual darkness.
Evidently, whatever had challenged the city from the moon was not happy about this development. Rifts began to open across the island, and through them alien forces began to appear. Robots not unlike those faced in the prison lab, and yet parts of them were wrong. These biological components were seemingly random, and appeared similar to parts of The Dwellers and Latchers.
Making matters worse, some were more monster than machine and could tower as high as a skyscraper. Regardless of where they spawned, they all began to move towards the weapons, making their goals clear.
YOUR GODS CANNOT SPEAK TO YOU. IT IS NOT THEIR FAULT. THEY ARE TRYING. BUT ALLOW ME TO AIDE YOU AND BESTOW UPON YOU THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO HARM THEM AS IS. YOU MUST SING. I WILL HELP YOU WITH THAT AS WELL.
You hear a voice that you can understand but can't. But you feel something. Warmth. They do not mean you ill will. In fact, you can feel the abilities the Stars had sealed return along with your weapons, while nearby each of the weapons a floating stage appeared. Were the enemies weak to music?
HOLD THEM OFF FOR NOW. DO WHAT YOU MUST. PROTECT YOUR PEOPLE. I WILL PREPARE FOR THE COUNTERATTACK. BUT DO NOT LET THOSE WHO CAN SING FALL. DO NOT LET THE WEAPONS FALL. I WILL GIVE ANSWERS WHEN I CAN. PLEASE TRUST ME.
But even if you didn't, it was probably a better option than getting mowed down by the approaching enemies.
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WHAT IS GOING ON NOW!?
There is a perpetual beam battle going on between a secret weapon hidden on the moon and the four weapons that were built in Spirale. Why? Nobody knows! The Stars have seemingly been rendered incapable of communicating.
The clashing beams have caused a perpetual darkness to fall over the island and perhaps the entire planet. The only thing you can observe in the sky aside from the blackness is the full moon.
Back on the ground, creatures have begun to pour out of portals that seem to resemble the corpses of the Dwellers and Latchers from the Data Corrupt event grafted to robot parts.
These monsters come in all shapes and sizes, but the larger ones are much rarer. Some can be as tall as a kaiju. On top of being bloodthirsty monsters, their machine parts also allow them to copy powers like the robots from the moon facilities and follow the same rules.
That said, because everyone is uncapped for part 2 (more information in the FAQ section), that means the abilities they can copy will be significantly stronger as well. They're also effectively invulnerable to any powers under normal circumstances.
But as the mysterious voice suggested, they do have one fatal weakness: music, more specifically a wavelength caused found in the singing voices of characters summoned to the city... perhaps this is why they tried to round everyone up on the moon?
If the monsters hear someone singing, the wavelength will significantly weaken their defenses relative to their size, making them killable.
To help with this, the mysterious entity has erected a gigantic stage in front of each of the four weapons (one per ward) that will broadcast the singing voice of whoever is on stage at the time throughout the ward.
The monsters are slowly closing in on these weapons with the intention of destroying them, so be sure to push them back!
Singing isn't safe either. The monsters will be attracted to whoever is singing, so it's important to surround the stage with trusted defenders.
If traveling out into the branches, try and bring a singer with you! They don't need to be talented for small skirmishes, but a seasoned performer would be preferable for bigger fights.
Think of this like a defense phase. The monsters will continue to come in waves with short several hour breaks in between, so be sure to strategize!
F.A.Q.
Our characters are uncapped, you say? Yes! Well, within reason anyways! The small percentage of characters that have extremely broken abilities will have those specific abilities nerfed down to something more reasonable by default. That means no abilities that could wipe an entire ward of enemies in one blast or one-shot a kaiju-sized foe! At most, you could clear out a block of weaker enemies with one attack! It wouldn't be much of a defense phase if a few OP characters could handle it alone! Additionally, if your character is unkillable that won't be the case during this event.
Do we need to include characters that can sing in our part 2 threads? Nope! While you would need one if you were fighting in the branches, there will be music playing over the speakers within the wards, so that will help weaken the monsters for you! This way you don't need to engage with the musical element if you don't want to!
How would we engage with the singing mechanics ICly if our character can sing? In a thread, you could use this as an excuse to have monsters attack your characters justifying the involvement of other characters to help defend them. You don't need to write your character singing throughout the thread, especially if it happens on stage because you could just say someone else takes over the singing from a different location on the stage! You could also include it in a drabble or a general post to let everyone know your character will be singing!
Do our characters need to be practiced singers for singing to be effective? Not necessarily, but it does help! The resonance will be more potent from a character that is a trained singer, but if you're fighting smaller monsters and can only sing poorly, that would likely still be enough to make killing them possible. It might just take a little more oomph. Just remember that singing will paint a target on your back though, so don't do it if you can't handle the aggro.
Is there anything for musicians that play instruments to do? If you'd like, you could have them perform on the stages with characters who can sing!
How much freedom do we have with the monster designs? About as much as you did with the robots! We're not going to be strictly policing what they look like so long as they're a mixture of machine parts and pieces of the monsters from Data Corrupt! If you'd rather keep them nondescript, that's fine as well!
What about the NPCs during this conflict? Will they be safe? Many of them have retreated to temporary bunkers, but there are still those out and about, particularly in the branches. If you're able, try to help them out and get them to safety!
Will the Fantasia designs for unpowered characters still be available for part 2? Yes!
Is the respawn system active? It is! It will even respawn you within 6 hours instead of 24 hours for the duration of the event!
The sky is pitch black, but what about the weather? Weather will continue to change as normal! Just, uh, without the sun!
Will the city remain illuminated? Power is still flowing throughout the island and any location with electricity still has. That said, there are way more lights in the populated regions like the city, and navigating some of the branches might require lights of your own. Some of the NPCs have decided to help by shooting off fireworks, flying drones with lights, etc. to help the player characters see.
Can our characters interact with the beams at all? Nope! Attacks won't affect them and if you come into contact with one of them, being immediately turned into dust would be the outcome.
How do the stages work for characters that want to sing on them? Because there are four stages active at all times and no character can sing for most of the day, anyone able and willing to sing on stage is free to use one after demonstrating their talent. That said, it is a very dangerous place to be because not only could monsters reach it and try to kill the singer, but monsters that have copied ranged attacks could take pot shots from afar. The last thing anyone needs is a kaiju-sized monster copying the ability to shoot a laser beam. Because of this, we recommend any performers go on stage with personal protection, and that more powerful characters focus on helping protect the stages rather than work on enemy culling since they won't be able to cull anything if no one is singing!
Do the singers need to be directly on stage? Are they singing on a specific microphone? To spread their song throughout the entire ward, yes! However, there are several other workable mics scattered around the stage grounds that aren't on the stages themselves that can transmit the soundwaves into the general area so that monsters can be repelled if they reach the stage before the main mic is picked up again.
Will there be a way to easily check which characters are able to sing if I want to incorporate them into a thread? On top of members hopefully including that information in event info and ad posts, sometime during the day after part 2 launches we'll be allowing members to submit their character names and some songs if they're idols / singers / etc. and would sing on stage. We'll be making Spotify and YouTube playlists with these submissions as well as keeping a character list on a sideblog! We'll let everyone know when this is up and running to submit their info!
What if my muse is evil and would like to help the monsters? Feel free! That said, you're still limited the same way as stated in the first point of this section and you'll be incapable of damage the weapons.
Is participation in part 2 required? It isn't! If you participated in part 1 and just wanted participation credit, that was enough!
Will there be more to this event? While there won't be a part 3, on July 3rd there will be an optional raid post going up! More information on that will be available on that date!
