wrackful | A SLENDER THING

The puzzles in January's event are meant to emulate, to some extent, an ARG. Translating this format to the DWRP sphere comes with a fair few limitations, as well as the fact that not all DWRPers are familiar with these kind of puzzles! So, some transparency, as a guide.

Players will be prompted through clues in the form of hyper-textual features (e.g., links, cryptics, and/or code words) to solve a series of puzzles. Following the chains will require navigation around Dreamwidth and Tumblr and solving iterative challenges. Each of these puzzle chains will result in a clearly stated final result that acts as a clue about the circumstances of the event and its resolution. While these puzzles will take a variety of forms, they will all be solvable through information readily accessible on the internet. Don't be afraid to collaborate and make liberal use of Google and Wikipedia!

For this event's puzzles...

There will be a total of six individual puzzle chains.
The starting clues will be distributed throughout the event (i.e., they will not all appear in the mod-posted event log on the 1st). Some starting clues may appear in player-generated network posts.
When a player (or group of players) reaches the end of a puzzle chain, they should bring their clue (the final step's result) to the appropriately labelled ARG header on the event log. There, players will receive an IC reflection of the clues. Once received, players should plot out an IC collaboration on how to get their character and at least one other to come across the IC mirror of this clue in-game.

VOLUNTEERS

If you would like to sign your character up for some direct involvement in the January plot, please reply to the SIGN-UPS comment below! Sign-ups will remain open from December 26th to 30th. All selected volunteers will be informed on the 31st, with further information for their participation communicated soon after.

Sign-ups will involve the following:

Your character will be under the Slender's influence until such time as that influence is disrupted.
Characters may or may not go missing for up to a week sometime between January 1st and 15th. The details, duration, and specific dates of these disappearances will be discussed after sign-ups close.
Upon returning to their life as usual and while under the Slender's influence, your character will still largely act like themselves. However, Slender's influence may incite them to:
Lying, gaslighting and manipulation
Theft, vandalism, kidnap, physical violence, self-harm, murder
Transformation into their duchozwierz
Volunteered characters MUST be willing to make a network post during the event (though depending on the number of volunteers, not all may be asked to do so). If you do not have the time, bandwidth, or interest in making a network post in January, please do not sign up!

Outside of a handful of specific incidents and the aforementioned guidelines, you will have free rein over what your character gets up to under Slender's influence! Go wild, as long as it keeps with the overall goals communicated here and following your sign-up, and as long as it doesn't disrupt other volunteers or the plot in general.

We ask that NO ONE share OOCly whether or not they are signing their characters up for this plot (even to indicate that they are not signing up, as that invites the process of elimination)! Whether you are signing up or not, please DO NOT indicate your intentions to anyone except in the screened replies to the SIGN-UPS header here.

Please understand that if a large number of players sign up, we will not be able to accommodate everyone. In this event, characters will be selected via RNG from the sign-ups. Please wait until you have heard back about the results before acting upon the assumption that your character will be under Slender's influence.