Search Requests

SEARCH REQUESTS

At game start, the map is completely unexplored and covered by a "fog of war" obscuring its features. New characters will be randomly dropped onto the island's shores; from there, to uncover tiles on the map and figure out more about where they are, search requests are required to document movement, attempt to uncover hidden materials and passages, discover or confront dangers, find old ruins and create new settlements, and potentially, solve puzzles related to the mystery of the island itself.

RULES AND GUIDELINES

Search requests are a required mechanic of this game. A search request for the current AC cycle must be submitted in order to pass AC without a strike.
Mistakes in search requests will never be penalized. Don't be afraid to eyeball a distance or make an approximate guess; if the math doesn't quite match up, or the path doesn't exist, I will offer alternate destinations and work with you in order to decide how the search request will resolve.
Search requests will rarely be immediately fatal. Unless your character is doing something intentionally reckless, I will do my best to offer paths of escape for any sudden dangers that arise.
You can be as precise or as vague as you want. If you want to exactly plot out the squares your character will travel through and search every IC day, that is totally fine. It's also fine to simply report that your character is staying in one place all month, or to give a starting point and a desired destination, with a general request to search a wide area. Just note that, the more vague you are in your request, the more I will extrapolate to fill in the blanks.
Retroactive/backdated search requests are allowed. They just can't be used for the current month's AC if they fall outside of the current month's AC period, or overwrite a previously submitted search request. Forward-dated search requests are also allowed as long as they fall within the same IC day that the request was posted (for example, if you post a search request on IC Day 30 morning, you can make that search request last for the entirety of IC day 30, not just the morning of).
Thoroughly searching a square, rather than just traveling through it, halves movement through that square. So if you choose to search every square along a path, you'll only travel half as far as someone moving with purpose to a destination. Remember that simply traveling through a square will still fully reveal it.
IC Days are split into three 8-hour increments. Each of these corresponds to one OOC day. Morning is from 4AM -> 11:59AM, Day is from 12PM -> 7:59PM, and Night is 8PM -> 3:59AM.
Several examples of search requests are provided below to help illustrate how they work. If you still have questions, please ask them in the FAQ (or in your search request!).

MAP REFERENCE/TRAVEL CONDITIONS

TRAVEL CONDITIONS | IC DAYS 15 → 17

MORNING

DAY

NIGHT

BEACH

OCEAN*

JUNGLE

FOOTHILLS

MOUNTAINS

4 squares/hour
(32 total)
3 square visibility

4 squares/hour
(32 total)
5 square visibility

4 squares/hour
(32 total)
1 square visibility

2 squares/hour
(16 total)
3 square visibility

2 squares/hour
(16 total)
5 square visibility

2 squares/hour
(16 total)
1 square visibility

1 square/hour
(8 total)
0 square visibility

2 squares/hour
(16 total)
2 square visibility

2 squares/hour
(16 total)
3 square visibility

1 square/hour
(8 total)
1 square visibility

1 square/hour
(8 total)
5 square visibility

1 square/hour
(8 total)
7 square visibility

1 square/hour
(8 total)
3 square visibility

*The average human can only tread water for three hours

LEGEND

- Preexisting Structure

- Ocean

- Reef

- Deep Water

- River

- Natural Landmark

- Beach

- Jungle

- Mangroves

- Character-Made Landmark

- Foothills

- Mountain

Click on any of the map tiles for details.

III

VII

VIII

XII

XIII

XIV

XVI

SUBMISSIONS

# | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
All new characters will be given a toplevel to this post. To submit a search request, fill out the below form and copy/paste it as a response to your toplevel.

IC DATES: The IC dates the search request covers (I would also recommend putting this in the subject line to make it easier to keyword search later). You can use whole days, partial days, or a combination of either. To verify what IC days line up with real-world days and events, consult the Calendar.

STARTING SQUARE: The square your character is starting their search request on, format TILE.COLUMN.ROW. This should line up with your previous search request, or your starting location if newly arrived/revived.

ENDING SQUARE: The square your character is ending their search request on. If you're not sure where they'll end up (the area is unexplored/your character has a vague idea of where they want to go/you're not sure on the math/etc.), you can give a more rough answer here. Something like "they want to make it to Tile II," or "as close to II.AA.3 as possible" are perfectly valid answers.

DETAILS: The meat of your request. This is where you describe:

The path your character is taking,
The squares you want them to search,
Any special actions your character is taking during this period of time (or inaction), and
Any other special notes or questions you might have about this request.

Again, you can provide as much or as little information as you want; saying that your character is simply moving from point A to point B without searching anything is 100% acceptable.

NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Night 011
Hour 1: IX.EE.23 -> IX.EE.25 (driftwood)
Hour 2: IX.EE.25 -> IX.EE.27 (wooden canoe paddle)
Hour 3: IX.EE.27 -> IX.FF.28 (can of luncheon meat, unlabeled)

Beth hears the ocean again off to the southwest, which means this is no longer a safe direction to travel - she diverts east instead.

Hour 4: IX.FF.28 -> X.A.28 (eight aloe plants)
Hour 5: X.A.28 -> X.C.28 (handheld butane lighter - casing is light blue with faded cartoon monkey faces on it)
Hour 6: X.C.28 -> X.E.28 (the bottom half of a plastic water bottle)
Hour 7: X.E.28 -> X.G.28 (a soft carry case for a foldable chair, minus the chair)
Hour 8: X.G.28 -> X.I.28 (starfish - still alive in one of the tidepools)

Morning 012
Hour 1: X.I.28 -> X.K.28 (transceiver upgrade - a clip-on case, elaborately decorated with a close-up picture of a black horse's head, elegantly turned to the side, on a dappled forest backdrop)

While Beth doesn't find any decent landmarks during the night, the light of morning quickly illuminates the edge of thick jungle and a river cutting into it just ahead.

Hour 2: X.K.28 -> X.L.28 (an ankle sock, white)

Of course, now that Beth is at the river, it's quite wide and looks pretty difficult to cross. Her path further north and due east appear to be blocked by it.

Beth has 6 hours remaining before Day 012.

Beth picks up and takes the following with her:

- the canoe paddle
- the lunch meat
- the lighter
- the water bottle
- the foldable chair bag
- the horse-girl walkie-talkie clip
- the starfish, after stabbing it with her surgical shears

Tragically, she doesn't know that aloe plants are edible - or really, what they look like at all - so she misses those.

Since she's spent ten hours trying to find someplace safe to chill out at, she's going to stay near the river and forest's edge for the next few hours. Things she'll be doing include:

· Testing if the water's more fresh or brackish and filling up the water bottle
· Gathering likely-looking firewood - anything that's reasonably dry - and digging a hole to build a fire in
· Trying to stick the starfish onto a branch and roasting it, then trying to figure out which bits are edible

She'll be drinking the water without boiling, because she wants to save the canned meat as long as she can manage, and it's in her only heatable container at the moment.

After that point, she'll look around the general area for more noisy trash, rope, shellfish, and anything else that might be useful. Her goal is to cordon off an area so she can actually sleep, but if she can't, she'll end up dozing off for some extremely unsatisfying sleep for an hour or two.

And then it's onward and inward, following the river into the forest in hopes of seeing where it leads.

The water is definitely freshwater, although it's a little on the murky side. At least when she scoops it up to drink it doesn't look too dirty...probably just a lot of dark sediment.

Morning 012 -> Day 012
Starting Square: X.L.28
Ending Square:
Duration: 14 hours
General Search Results:

feather cat toy
two chunks of tusk
eight handfuls of lemongrass
empty tin can
degraded plastic container
medium waterbug
strange freshwater shellfish - definitely clam-adjacent but pearlescent purple, with multiple long, pink tentacles swirling in the river currents
bundle of tinsel
keychain bauble - a pair of otters (or is it one otter with two heads?)
a cattail flower
freshwater fish - minnows, close enough to the shore to catch
four cucumbers
fishing lure

Beth makes a small campsite in square X.L.28. She does find a fairly secluded section of trees with enough springy branches to fashion a makeshift bed, which should provide better sleep than just laying on the ground nearby. Eating the starfish is kind of a tricky affair, but not impossible, and it doesn't make Beth immediately sick!

She can travel a decent way up the river while still searching for goodies, but doesn't find the river's source before nightfall. It's getting a lot thinner pretty fast, though - thin enough to cross at this point, if Beth wants to.

She'll be keeping:
- the feather cat toy
- the pieces of turk (they're just cool)
- the tin can
- the tinsel
- the keychain bauble
- the fishing lure
- the cucumbers
- the cattail flower

The plastic container, I'm not sure about. Out of curiosity, should I be picturing more like a busted-up cooler or a squashed raspbery punnet here?

For Night 012, Beth will attempt to roast the minnows on a stick and boil the shellfish in the tin can - all to eat, naturally. She doesn't know that lemongrass is edible, which is sort of killing me, but here we are. She spends the night trying to sleep on her bed of branches.

For Morning and Day 013, she'll be heading into the heart of darkness more deliberately - stamping out her fire, taking her chair bag full of stuff, and planning to eat the cucumbers on the way as she follows the river in further. She'll cross to the south but keep heading east, generally. She'll be looking for food, trash, rope, and weapons, as always. In her dreams, she finds someplace more permanent to use as her home base, but as long as she can figure out somewhere to stop for the night, she'll be good.

The plastic container is definitely more on the "squashed raspberry punnet" side of things.

Night 012 -> Day 013
Starting Square: X.T.26 (forgot to put this in the other results, whoops)
Ending Square: X.BB.24
Duration: 24 hours
General Search Results:

pink freshwater crab
eight strange fruits - quite large, thick green-red rind, grows in bunches like bananas
chunk of tusk
plastic bucket, no handles
six handfuls of strange berries - like a cross between blueberries and raspberries
whip
six tomatoes
eight passionfruit
eight dragonfruit
small pack of cotton swabs
large, waterproof leaf
book of damp matches
two handfuls of river fish eggs - large, pink, opaque
sock
small snake - looks like a corn snake
weird river fish - medium-sized, like a small salmon, but with a completely black underside

Beth creates (then mostly covers up) a temporary camp in square X.T.26. She finds the source of the river in nearby square X.W.26 - a small creek that burbles out of a glade of trees in the thick, vibrant jungle - but the day is still young, so further east she goes! She eventually finds and tracks another river several kilometers later, this one flowing north-south, and is even able to find its source before nightfall in square X.BB.24. This river is a bit bigger and begins in a small, still pond covered in duckweed and moss.

Then heck with the plastic container. 😉

Beth's psyched by the amount of food she's finding here in the deeper part of the forest - like dang, if she could only find someplace more permanent to stay, this would be completely tolerable by her standards. Alas, she's still looking on that front.

The things she's definitely taking are:

- crab (bash that guy before it can pinch her!!!)
- strange fruits, berries, tomatoes, passionfruit, dragonfruit - all of which are going in the plastic bucket
- more tusk!
- the whip, hell yes a whip
- cotton swabs
- damp matches

(She doesn't recognize the fish roe as edible, and again, it is k i l l i n g m e.)

The snake, she tries to catch - walk up to it softly as she can, stomp its tail under her boot, and then try to stab it with her surgical shears. Whether she actually succeeds is something else entirely. She's going to let the fish live for now and maybe try jury rigging a fishing rod as a future endeavor; temporary camps don't leave a lot of room for safe meat storage.

Dinner is crab (and maybe snake) roasted on a fire until it seems done + a little of each of her fruits, and then resting near the pond for the night. The fact that she hasn't seen any walkers is still unsettling, but she's getting more comfortable with that fact.

For Day 014, she'll be sticking close to this square - figuring out how to crack a whip effectively, since she's only ever seen people do that in movies, and then looking for more permanent shelter and/or useful-looking stuff nearby. This area seems genuinely useful to her; a decent amount of food, close enough to a river that she doesn't need to drink pond-scum. She'll leave the matches out in the sun in hopes of drying them while she walks around.

Night 013 ➜ Day 014
Starting Square: X.BB.24
Ending Square: X.BB.24
Duration: 24 hours
General Search Results:

two freshwater clams
orange melon rind
five cattails
ballcap - tattered and off-white, plain
candy insect - cockroach, strawberry hard coating
nineteen wood logs
sleeping bag
tote bag
nail clippers
four bananas
clump of fur - black with patches of gray
four large eggs - chicken egg sized, but faintly pink-tinted
ballcap - mesh bill, green, has a fish embroidered on the front
a mango
five tomatoes
four coconuts
seven strange berries - purple, bundled like cherries
two strange bird eggs - resemble quail eggs, but with stripes instead of spots

Beth attempts to skewer the snake, but it skitters away from her into the underbrush before she can dispatch it. No snake for dinner on Night 013, and there are no landmarks or interesting manmade structures in the squares immediately surrounding her temporary campsite.

Heartbreaking, really, to have so much food available and so little shelter. On the upside, she knows an area - vaguely - where she can eat reasonably well.

So she's keeping:

- two freshwater clams
- orange melon rind
- five cattails
- ballcap - mesh bill, green, has a fish embroidered on the front
- candy insect - cockroach, strawberry hard coating
- sleeping bag!!!!!!!
- tote bag
- nail clippers
- four bananas
- four large eggs - chicken egg sized, but faintly pink-tinted
- a mango
- five tomatoes
- four coconuts
- seven strange berries - purple, bundled like cherries
- two strange bird eggs - resemble quail eggs, but with stripes instead of spots

At this point, she's probably eaten through a lot of her previous finds. This is about the healthiest she's been while living in the woods - it's nice not to have to live on snake alone. She's getting actual vitamins here, and to be honest, she never expected to eat a banana again. So this is kind of a big deal. The absolute delight with which she tears into those is hard to overstate.

She stacks the logs someplace without too much undergrowth, hoping maybe she can come back for them at some point - but at the moment, her priority's shifting towards finding more permanent shelter. The sleeping bag gets stuffed into the tote bag, the food stays in the bucket, the hat goes on her head, and her small supplies are still in the chair bag. Time to follow a new river and see if it leads anywhere interesting. If not, she'll try to find more temporary shelter for the night.

Just verifying: The last search left off at the start of Night 014. Would Beth start walking downriver during the night, or stay at her temporary camp until Morning 015?

Oh! Silly me - I meant for this to be post-014 all around. She'll spend the night asleep-ish and get started in the morning.

(My dream is basically to get all caught up and then only bug you once a week. Thank you so much for all your patience in this. ♥)

Noted, and thank you!

Morning 015 ➜ Day 015
Starting Square: X.BB.24
Ending Square: XI.L.32
Duration: 13 hours
General Search Results:

crawfish
scented candle - smells strongly of fresh laundry
sock

Beth follows the river all the way to its mouth at the beach, where she finds a somewhat fortified campsite on the other side, in square X.L.31, and signs of its occupant puttering around the area (although he is currently not around when she arrives). Beth still has three hours before Night 015 to do something with this discovery.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Search Requests

SEARCH REQUESTS

RULES AND GUIDELINES

MAP REFERENCE/TRAVEL CONDITIONS

SUBMISSIONS

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ten thousand years later: morning/day 012

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Morning/Day/Night 013

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