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 023 ➜ Morning 024
Starting Square: VII.O.9
Ending Square: VII.S.7
Duration: 16 hours
General Search Results:

threadbare t-shirt
fish spine
sock
four handfuls of stinging nettle
two handfuls of wild rice
two papayas
three handfuls of termites
four handfuls of cinchona
a mango
four plantains

The night isn't uneventful, even beyond Lalo's reverse-kidnapping and torture; during his periods of semi-consciousness, he keeps catching glimpses of movement out of the corner of his eye, what might be the glint of sharp teeth smiling at him from somewhere in the dark past their camp. But nothing directly reveals itself while they wait or during the next morning's travel.

They reach the fork in the river and Rust does his thorough patrol around it just before the end of Morning 024, putting them in square VII.S.7.

Lalo drifts in and out of consciousness all night. He's seen Rust hallucinate before, but now he wonders if maybe he's the one hallucinating. Feeling the night air icy cold against his shivering body, covered in sweat from being tortured earlier, he sees the glint of teeth in the dark and wonders if they're real or a figment of his imagination.

As he exists in the hazy space between conscious and not, alive and note, he's subject to several strange dreams, their whispers persisting even during periods when he's more alert. In one, the ground opens and, squirming but still tied, he's simply tilted by the earth giving out underneath him into a big pit, lined at the edges with the sharp, white teeth he sees in the dark. In another, eyeless humanoid monsters with huge mouths that cover their entire face grin at him from all sides, rising up from the water, from the tall grass, from everywhere, to stand.

And when they dissipate and his eyes open, and Lalo realizes they've been closed... but there it is again. Teeth. Flashing at him, then disappearing. Lalo's gaze softens, his eyebrows raise quizzically. Behind the gag, it's possible to see his muscles relax as he stares back. Otherwise, his face remains impassive.

He thinks about how he believes this creature hunts by smell. He wonders if it can smell his blood and decides there's no way it can't. It must be drinking in the scent of him and the sight of him, both the physical wounds to his body and the psychic wounds to his soul.

The teeth rip and tear at his flesh, stripping what remains of it from the bone. His eyes open again. The flesh still hangs on his skeleton, minus any Rust removed earlier in the day.

But there the teeth are again. Grinning at him.

In the morning, he's clearly exhausted and about to drop as Rust marches him, but he's as chatty and cheerful as he can muster. He has a few suggestions about where to leave his body/him, based on what Rust is trying to accomplish here.

Edited 2023-09-16 00:31 (UTC)

Search Requests

SEARCH REQUESTS

RULES AND GUIDELINES

MAP REFERENCE/TRAVEL CONDITIONS

SUBMISSIONS

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