The Midnight Watch

Can you make the disguise kits so that you can pick the hairstyles, hair color and name? And make them re-usable? That way you could 1. Get disguises that aren't horribly stupid and 2. Actually use the disguise kits to give yourself another identity instead of being 8 different people over the course of a week. Maybe also make them harder to craft so they become more valuable.

Another will be held some time next month! Be sure to show up for such changes as the 'sudden sudden death' round and other interesting rule variations.

1st Place Winner - Morty
2nd Place Winner - Craystor Rake
3rd Place Winner - Derek Lumbar

If you're a non-combatant feel free to bring your money along as well! There will be a betting pool!

That would be really cool to have in game

I'd also like to point out that you don't necessarily need to ask a GM to build you a house. We currently have 2 or 3 houses on the swamp side of town that aren't being used. They are filled with barrels, wheat and beds. All 3 could be 'claimed' and made into a house/hideout/anything. I took one and made it my own storage room.

By the docks we have the old Shipwright's house which hasn't been touched since he died. That's essentially free property. The bank no longer has an owner so that's up for grabs. And someone could even make their own little hide out in the dry well if they're brave enough. As long as you have a decent IC explanation, I don't think anyone will try and stop you from taking these plots. + It'd be less work for GM's who're swamped with building requests so I hear.

P.S - We also have some 'rubble' plots close to the swamp, particularly one infested with rat men. I think it'd be pretty cool if someone chose to fix those places up and make them into brand new houses. That'd create a lot of work for carpenters/tinkers/warriors, etc and it'd be something to do. You could go on fixing places up and selling them to people for a profit. Really there's a lot to do if you take the initiative.

I will do my best to find you

+1 to the above. That'd be perfect.
If rules were implemented along with some way for boxes to lock after time, I'm sure the problem would be fixed. Assuming of course the main concern here is that of being dry looted.

I generally agree with Keres on these things. But I will add what I can.

Being Dry Looted - If your house gets broken in to, and everything is gone(Hell, even if an unreasonable amount of resources are gone) then I'm sure a GM would help compensate you, because that shouldn't be allowed. Taking resources from someone's house is iffy, taking all of them and screwing them over is an OOC offense in my opinion. I don't know if that's ever happened, so I'm taking a shot in the dark, but I think we can trust our playerbase to not do such a thing, and if they do GM intervention would be appropriate. Maybe something could be posted like an OOC guideline for thiefs and tell them not to dry loot or steal resources. It's never happened to me so I don't know, but I don't think this is a strong reason to have secure storage.

Losing all your gold - This would be frustrating for sure but not the end of the world. You'd have options. You could seek justice, or go vigilante and try to get your gold back. Or you could continue on without gold because it really isn't that important. I've been pay people with leather hides for a while now. I don't use my gold very often, and I prefer to pay gold when I'm paying for an RP type service. I payed Zanven 50 gold just to collect meat for me. Keres post detailed this fairly well, it is very possible to make money without trade skills. None of my characters have had any and they got along fine.

The bank itself - Pretty much anyone can take over the bank them self and do what they want with it. It's a room full of empty boxes and the owner is dead, so any character could take over. I considered doing so on my churchie, but I didn't think it'd be appropriate. If you did take over, you could have all sorts of precautions against theft. Trapped boxes, locked doors, etc.. Needing to register with the bank before getting your key, etc..You could make money off that, selling people the rights to use the bank boxes.

the OP doesn't quite explain how a character with a goal will give you more to do, so I'll clarify that as an addition. If your sitting in the tavern, as people are winding down from a GM event, then that is where having a goal comes in to play. Let's say you have two characters, character A and B.

Character B is sitting there without any sort of goal. What's he going to do? Likely sit, engage in whatever discussion is going on. Things will be the same for him when he walks out as they were when he walked in.

Character A, however, has a goal he wants to work towards. So he looks around the tavern, who's in? The militia captain? Perfect! Whereas, Char B would have no reason to approach anyone, Char A does. He's going to go to the Militia Captain and make friends/make an agreement/murder him in cold blood! Regardless of whether or not the interaction goes as intended, your character leaves in a different position, the Captain has been affected in some way, and RP has been created.

In another scenario, let's say you have a character you'd like to play over the weekend when activity picks up. On Character B there's a good chance you'll simply log in, stand around the middle of town and wait for divine GM intervention to make something happen.

If you're on character A, you've got more options! First of all, you can decide what your character needs and make a trade post or two a day in advance. Right off the bat you've given the crafters something to do, I'm sure they'd be grateful for that. Now when the weekend is there, you can probably have your order handled by said crafter. Congratulations, you've made the economy work. But wait, there's more! Let's say that militia captain is on again! You've already met him so now you can do something more interesting! For the sake of making a decent example, let's say you want him dead. Now you can take advantage of the high activity to hire some goons perhaps! Maybe you can spread a few lies and convince someone he slept with their mother. Perhaps put on a ghost costume and scare him to death. I'm almost sure these examples would backfire horribly, but you would've came up with something better if you were playing character A!

So when you've got a goal in mind, it gives you reason to:
-Make more trade posts, support the economy
-Create IC relationships, more opportunity for RP
-Get upset when things don't go your way, create drama
-Rock the boat IC and see how people react, more RP
-Kidnap someone, your own miniplot'
-Try to kill the orc, creates racism!
-Overthrow the mayor, politics and scandal!
-Bomb the church
-Form a squad of bandits
-Sabotage someone
-Blackmail someone
-Convince the church someone is a wytch
-Form angry mobs, run people out of town

I too think we should keep everything in theme with what we already have. Dat immersion

The following is fairly graphic.

Russian researchers in the late 1940s kept five people awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake so the gas didn't kill them, since it was toxic in high concentrations. This was before closed circuit cameras so they had only microphones and 5 inch thick glass porthole sized windows into the chamber to monitor them. The chamber was stocked with books, cots to sleep on but no bedding, running water and toilet, and enough dried food to last all five for over a month.

The test subjects were political prisoners deemed enemies of the state during World War II.
Everything was fine for the first five days; the subjects hardly complained having been promised (falsely) that they would be freed if they submitted to the test and did not sleep for 30 days. Their conversations and activities were monitored and it was noted that they continued to talk about increasingly traumatic incidents in their past, and the general tone of their conversations took on a darker aspect after the 4 day mark.

After five days they started to complain about the circumstances and events that lead them to where they were and started to demonstrate severe paranoia. They stopped talking to each other and began alternately whispering to the microphones and one way mirrored portholes. Oddly they all seemed to think they could win the trust of the experimenters by turning over their comrades, the other subjects in captivity with them. At first the researchers suspected this was an effect of the gas itself...

After nine days the first of them started screaming. He ran the length of the chamber repeatedly yelling at the top of his lungs for 3 hours straight, he continued attempting to scream but was only able to produce occasional squeaks. The researchers postulated that he had physically torn his vocal cords. The most surprising thing about this behavior is how the other captives reacted to it... or rather didn't react to it. They continued whispering to the microphones until the second of the captives started to scream. The 2 non-screaming captives took the books apart, smeared page after page with their own feces and pasted them calmly over the glass portholes. The screaming promptly stopped.

So did the whispering to the microphones.

After 3 more days passed. The researchers checked the microphones hourly to make sure they were working, since they thought it impossible that no sound could be coming with 5 people inside. The oxygen consumption in the chamber indicated that all 5 must still be alive. In fact it was the amount of oxygen 5 people would consume at a very heavy level of strenuous exercise. On the morning of the 14th day the researchers did something they said they would not do to get a reaction from the captives, they used the intercom inside the chamber, hoping to provoke any response from the captives they were afraid were either dead or vegetables.

They announced: "We are opening the chamber to test the microphones step away from the door and lie flat on the floor or you will be shot. Compliance will earn one of you your immediate freedom."

To their surprise they heard a single phrase in a calm voice response: "We no longer want to be freed."

Debate broke out among the researchers and the military forces funding the research. Unable to provoke any more response using the intercom it was finally decided to open the chamber at midnight on the fifteenth day.

The chamber was flushed of the stimulant gas and filled with fresh air and immediately voices from the microphones began to object. 3 different voices began begging, as if pleading for the life of loved ones to turn the gas back on. The chamber was opened and soldiers sent in to retrieve the test subjects. They began to scream louder than ever, and so did the soldiers when they saw what was inside. Four of the five subjects were still alive, although no one could rightly call the state that any of them in 'life.'

The food rations past day 5 had not been so much as touched. There were chunks of meat from the dead test subject's thighs and chest stuffed into the drain in the center of the chamber, blocking the drain and allowing 4 inches of water to accumulate on the floor. Precisely how much of the water on the floor was actually blood was never determined. All four 'surviving' test subjects also had large portions of muscle and skin torn away from their bodies. The destruction of flesh and exposed bone on their finger tips indicated that the wounds were inflicted by hand, not with teeth as the researchers initially thought. Closer examination of the position and angles of the wounds indicated that most if not all of them were self-inflicted.

The abdominal organs below the ribcage of all four test subjects had been removed. While the heart, lungs and diaphragm remained in place, the skin and most of the muscles attached to the ribs had been ripped off, exposing the lungs through the ribcage. All the blood vessels and organs remained intact, they had just been taken out and laid on the floor, fanning out around the eviscerated but still living bodies of the subjects. The digestive tract of all four could be seen to be working, digesting food. It quickly became apparent that what they were digesting was their own flesh that they had ripped off and eaten over the course of days.

Most of the soldiers were Russian special operatives at the facility, but still many refused to return to the chamber to remove the test subjects. They continued to scream to be left in the chamber and alternately begged and demanded that the gas be turned back on, lest they fall asleep...

To everyone's surprise the test subjects put up a fierce fight in the process of being removed from the chamber. One of the Russian soldiers died from having his throat ripped out, another was gravely injured by having his testicles ripped off and an artery in his leg severed by one of the subject's teeth. Another 5 of the soldiers lost their lives if you count ones that committed suicide in the weeks following the incident.

In the struggle one of the four living subjects had his spleen ruptured and he bled out almost immediately. The medical researchers attempted to sedate him but this proved impossible. He was injected with more than ten times the human dose of a morphine derivative and still fought like a cornered animal, breaking the ribs and arm of one doctor. When heart was seen to beat for a full two minutes after he had bled out to the point there was more air in his vascular system than blood. Even after it stopped he continued to scream and flail for another 3 minutes, struggling to attack anyone in reach and just repeating the word "MORE" over and over, weaker and weaker, until he finally fell silent.

The surviving three test subjects were heavily restrained and moved to a medical facility, the two with intact vocal cords continuously begging for the gas demanding to be kept awake...

The most injured of the three was taken to the only surgical operating room that the facility had. In the process of preparing the subject to have his organs placed back within his body it was found that he was effectively immune to the sedative they had given him to prepare him for the surgery. He fought furiously against his restraints when the anesthetic gas was brought out to put him under. He managed to tear most of the way through a 4 inch wide leather strap on one wrist, even through the weight of a 200 pound soldier holding that wrist as well. It took only a little more anesthetic than normal to put him under, and the instant his eyelids fluttered and closed, his heart stopped. In the autopsy of the test subject that died on the operating table it was found that his blood had triple the normal level of oxygen. His muscles that were still attached to his skeleton were badly torn and he had broken 9 bones in his struggle to not be subdued. Most of them were from the force his own muscles had exerted on them.

The second survivor had been the first of the group of five to start screaming. His vocal cords destroyed he was unable to beg or object to surgery, and he only reacted by shaking his head violently in disapproval when the anesthetic gas was brought near him. He shook his head yes when someone suggested, reluctantly, they try the surgery without anesthetic, and did not react for the entire 6 hour procedure of replacing his abdominal organs and attempting to cover them with what remained of his skin. The surgeon presiding stated repeatedly that it should be medically possible for the patient to still be alive. One terrified nurse assisting the surgery stated that she had seen the patients mouth curl into a smile several times, whenever his eyes met hers.

When the surgery ended the subject looked at the surgeon and began to wheeze loudly, attempting to talk while struggling. Assuming this must be something of drastic importance the surgeon had a pen and pad fetched so the patient could write his message. It was simple. "Keep cutting."

The other two test subjects were given the same surgery, both without anesthetic as well. Although they had to be injected with a paralytic for the duration of the operation. The surgeon found it impossible to perform the operation while the patients laughed continuously. Once paralyzed the subjects could only follow the attending researchers with their eyes. The paralytic cleared their system in an abnormally short period of time and they were soon trying to escape their bonds. The moment they could speak they were again asking for the stimulant gas. The researchers tried asking why they had injured themselves, why they had ripped out their own guts and why they wanted to be given the gas again.

Only one response was given: "I must remain awake."

All three subject's restraints were reinforced and they were placed back into the chamber awaiting determination as to what should be done with them. The researchers, facing the wrath of their military 'benefactors' for having failed the stated goals of their project considered euthanizing the surviving subjects. The commanding officer, an ex-KGB instead saw potential, and wanted to see what would happen if they were put back on the gas. The researchers strongly objected, but were overruled.

In preparation for being sealed in the chamber again the subjects were connected to an EEG monitor and had their restraints padded for long term confinement. To everyone's surprise all three stopped struggling the moment it was let slip that they were going back on the gas. It was obvious that at this point all three were putting up a great struggle to stay awake. One of subjects that could speak was humming loudly and continuously; the mute subject was straining his legs against the leather bonds with all his might, first left, then right, then left again for something to focus on. The remaining subject was holding his head off his pillow and blinking rapidly. Having been the first to be wired for EEG most of the researchers were monitoring his brain waves in surprise. They were normal most of the time but sometimes flat lined inexplicably. It looked as if he were repeatedly suffering brain death, before returning to normal. As they focused on paper scrolling out of the brainwave monitor only one nurse saw his eyes slip shut at the same moment his head hit the pillow. His brainwaves immediately changed to that of deep sleep, then flatlined for the last time as his heart simultaneously stopped.

The only remaining subject that could speak started screaming to be sealed in now. His brainwaves showed the same flatlines as one who had just died from falling asleep. The commander gave the order to seal the chamber with both subjects inside, as well as 3 researchers. One of the named three immediately drew his gun and shot the commander point blank between the eyes, then turned the gun on the mute subject and blew his brains out as well.

He pointed his gun at the remaining subject, still restrained to a bed as the remaining members of the medical and research team fled the room. "I won't be locked in here with these things! Not with you!" he screamed at the man strapped to the table. "WHAT ARE YOU?" he demanded. "I must know!"

The subject smiled.

"Have you forgotten so easily?" The subject asked. "We are you. We are the madness that lurks within you all, begging to be free at every moment in your deepest animal mind. We are what you hide from in your beds every night. We are what you sedate into silence and paralysis when you go to the nocturnal haven where we cannot tread."

The researcher paused. Then aimed at the subject's heart and fired. The EEG flatlined as the subject weakly choked out, "So... nearly... free..."