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That said, do remember that all players, leaders, and staff are adults and most have full-time jobs or schooling. Timely responses are, of course, ideal, and repeated failure to respond in a timely manner should certainly be addressed, but some grace is always appreciated. For the most part, we all wish we could respond faster too!

Even if Player 3 becomes inactive at some point, Player 2's avenues for reclamation may be limited, especially if Player 3 specifically has Jackal exit 'Souls or has other specific plans, as opposed to simply disappearing.

(And our long-supportive members, of course!)

Not in recent memory, no. It's happened a few times in the past, though the ruse never lasts long and it's never worth it! Ultimately, it's a lot easier to just wait out 30 days and the requisite number of posts than it is to keep up a charade indefinitely. Constantly having to lie to everyone -- staff, sure, but also your RP partners -- is a lot of work! Also, with OOC accounts now, that's a minimum of four accounts to manage just to play two characters? Or six if you wanted to do three? And multiple Discord accounts?? ...Just make the posts, man. :V

When we had many more packs (at our peak, we had nine?? packs -- eleven made it in the yearbook that year, with two disbandments and two new packs formed), it was always sad when a pack disbanded, but it felt less like a blow to the board on the whole -- and as mentioned, people were always eager to start new packs in their wake. Even if all the packs disbanded, we don't see a reason to retire the pack formation process -- why not keep it around for when someone else wants to start a pack? In the meantime, sure, loner bands are there to be utilised. It may be that 'Souls transitions into a loner band-centric place, which somewhat resemble the simpler, classic packs of yore. We don't think there's anything wrong with that. The game has always, to some extent, changed and adapted with its players. As our playerbase continues to age, it may be that that more relaxed model of group management (loner bands) is better or more desirable, but that doesn't mean the pack model can't still work for some players who have the time/energy. We've endeavoured to simplify leadership responsibilities over the years (for example, by eliminating requirements for pack sites and encouraging leaders to delegate some tasks to members), but the most integral parts of leadership will always be time-consuming. We're not sure there's much we can do to make things easier, but as always we welcome feedback from past and current leaders if they have input or suggestions. :>

It's a tough thing to balance! Some players want excitement all the time and some players would much rather do their own thing with minimal input or influence from cosmic forces of nature that might scheme to destroy the very cool cabin they slaved over.

New blood is always great (have you voted for us recently? ;D), but it can take quite a while for a new player to become acclimated to 'Soul's hefty knowledgebase and feel comfortable enough to tackle a pack.

Yes, in the absence of humans, many species have expanded their ranges and repopulated historic territories. This is true of the grizzly, but even its historic ranges do not include Maritimes Canada. They remain on the western half of the continent, and while Luperci from those regions may have had encounters in the past, there should still not be any grizzly encounters in playable territories.

If the only leader of a pack is removed for inactivity, the pack is automatically disbanded. If the leader is reachable, they have one week to create an IC reason for the disbandment; otherwise, it is assumed that the leader character simply disappeared, throwing the pack into chaos.

The date you post your drop notice is the date you officially drop your character, regardless of when your title is removed, etc. Similarly, the date you PM your leader asking permission to NPC constitutes your drop date, and leaders should reflect this when they post aNPC notices.

No. It's not uncommon for players who are leaders to achieve high ranks in other packs, but regardless of IC rank, players are not leaders of a pack unless they have formal OOC authority in the pack, and leaders in one pack cannot have this in another pack.

Yes, to a degree. Markings can shift slightly/somewhat between forms, but there shouldn't be any dramatic differences. All colors and patterns should appear in all forms. Characters cannot have completely different markings between forms. Every marking that appears in Lupus form should have a counterpart in Optime form, but the exact size/proportion of the marking can vary slightly. For example, if a character is all white but has black hair in Optime form, they should absolutely have a patch of black on their head in Lupus form too -- but it's fine for that patch of black to be somewhat smaller in Lupus form than Optime form (e.g., say it covers 25% of their head in Lupus form but 50% of their head in Optime). This degree of creative allowance is permissible. If you have a specific design you want to discuss, please feel free to PM us.

Ideally, if implemented, pronoun roles would be self-assigned rather than staff-assigned. Usually this is via a specific role-assignment channel, but we generally try to keep things simple on the server by limiting the number of channels. If there's big demand for this, we can consider it, but this can be handled via existing functionality.

he/they.

No, canon-timeline humans would've recognised dogs and other canines as threats a long time ago and would have eliminated them accordingly within their enclaves. In the early years of the apocalypse though (pre-90's), that threat may not have been clear, so pet dogs living among human survivors may have triggered scares among humans during their first shift, interalised the fear humans had for them and shifted their allegiance away from humans, and become more direct threats. Canines among human survivors are likely to also pass around continued variants of the virus (effects to canines could be the same while becoming more/differently dangerous to humans), threatening whatever fragile immunity they achieve. And so, alt-timeline humans would probably need to eliminate canines among them much earlier in order to prevent virus variants from spreading and to gain a better foothold on otherwise dog-dominant territories in order to establish broader control. We have no plans to allow for playable characters to have had direct contact with humans at any point within the last 20 years. At this point, even the characters that came into direct contact with humans during the Gamma 7 plot are long gone and their stories have mostly not survived.

Canonically, the immune human populations have been in steady decline for some years. Their isolated enclaves are generally poorly suited for ongoing survival due to limited, polluted, and contaminated resources. By now, numerous natural disasters, equipment meltdowns, energy depletion, etc, would've also taken its toll. Ventures outside their contained areas invariably end in disaster, and it's likely the canon human population will become extinct soon. All that said, sure, it's possible that in an alternate timeline, humans could challenge local Luperci populations and reclaim land outside of their enclaves. In the US, at least, it's not unlikely for there to be insane stockpiles of weapons and munitions available for use so that even a tiny human population could defeat large numbers of Luperci, who might quickly learn to fear and avoid them. Realistically, the best time for humans to have pushed for this would've been early on, while Luperci populations were less organised and adapted -- if immune humans in the early and mid-90's had pushed out and eliminated nearby canine populations (they'd need to murder all their doggos though), they might've had a better chance establishing larger human territories. But this would've also been the time when they're least sure of what's happening, whether they're still at risk of the virus, etc. Also, while munitions might take a while to go through, resources like gasoline, electricity, etc, would deplete fairly quickly. Diseases and virus' that are treatable with modern human medicine would no longer be available. The AIDS epidemic was still ongoing in 1988, and influenza and other contagious diseases would rapidly spread throughout the populous. Birth mortality rates would increase, and even for infants that did survive, a large portion would not live to see their fifth birthday. (Immunity is also not guaranteed to be inherited.) Humans are prone to in-fighting, and dwindling resources may strain already tenuous group relations.