SUPERSTORM EVENT: THIRD DAY INFO POST

[namesram]

Under the cuts are the conditions on the Grid during the third day of the storm, and the immediate aftermath. While cleaning crews will be out after the storm, getting transportation running again, repairing power and communication channels damaged in the deluge, and clearing away debris, and Tron City will be back to operating condition two days (six millicycles) after the storm, there will be permanent large-scale changes in the Grid’s geography.


Weather on the third day:

• Wind, rain, sleet, and lightning continues. Visibility is terrible, and getting around in the city at all, on foot or by vehicle, is dangerous. Parts of the Undercity are completely flooded and/or choked with ice. Tron City will feel distant earthquakes, and then some closer ones. Some badly-built structures might fracture or collapse.
• The Portal will be flashing brightly, illuminating the cloud cover in its direction: sometimes just one bright flash every half-hour or so, sometimes a rapid series of flashes with no discernible pattern.
• Midway into the third day, death will stop working. Characters will probably not realize this right away unless someone dies in front of them, but that’s when it happens. (After that time, no characters will die for longer than five minutes at a time until a couple of in-game weeks later, when the new state of affairs has settled in; after that, players can kill PCs off for longer periods if they wish.)
• Near the end of the third day, there will be a particularly bright flash and a very brief Grid-wide shakeup/gravity-blip. Characters will probably be knocked off their feet.
• The storm will then begin to die down, the ice around the populated areas will begin to melt, and the excess water will drain away. At about midnight after the third day, all the clouds will disperse.

After the storm:

Programs venturing outside may notice that the Portal shines just a touch brighter than before, with a striking halo around it that will fade as the atmosphere settles down.

They will almost definitely notice that there have been a number of changes in the Grid’s geography. The storm and earthquakes were Grid!physics’ way to find balance as the Portal went bananas and did things.

And as they take stock and update all their maps, they will notice the following GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGES:

• Argon City now abuts Tron City, and will be known as Argon District. The Portal programs managed to save Argon from being exported entirely, but they couldn’t plonk it down where it was, so it now borders the hexagonal moat surrounding Tron City. Its former coastal area faces toward the Outlands, with Tron City behind it.
• Almost all of the smaller or little-populated settlements -- Indium, Gallium, Bismuth -- are simply gone, though residents of Tron City will not know this right away. Roads and power beams heading toward their sites simply stop at the edge, leading to a broad expanse of untouched Outlands rock, as if the cities were never there. As the Portal programs will report, these cities have been exported from the Free Grid to destinations unknown. Everybody who was in those areas at the time went with them. As far as the Portal team knows, they are alive and safe, just elsewhere. Closer to the Portal, vast stretches of the Outlands have been reclaimed by the Sea; the Grid is less than half the length it once was.
• Tron City and its new suburb Argon, Bostrum Colony, and the remains of Arjia City (which didn’t move because it’s on the Codestream Nexus) are the only known populated areas left. This is not to say the Outlands are completely depopulated now. People in transit between cities, or living in very small groups or alone, could easily not have been transported.
• Last but not least, the coastal area of Argon Sector, on the edge of what used to be an Outlands valley, now surrounds a small inland sea containing uncontaminated water from another Grid’s Sea of Simulation. The implications for reversing the viral contamination in the Free Grid’s Sea are as yet uncertain, but there is once again a pure patch of Sea accessible near Tron City.

Mzny NPCs, in the cities and out, were Portaled away also. Not all; the Grid still has a healthy population, but there will be some shakeups as people scramble to fill important jobs vacated in the exodus.

During the first day after the storm (the fourth day of the event), a news packet will arrive from the Portal. The Portal programs know exactly who ported out, down to the last program. As communications are restored, the detailed list will be available throughout the Grid. From now on, no one just disappears -- they’re either alive somewhere on the Free Grid, or are known to have been transported away from it.

The Portal programs are fairly proud of their achievements and will accept thanks in the form of gossip, music, and people trying not to get derezzed too darned often. :D

Comments

[ram_xr71]

Regarding the brighter-shining Portal, is the light it's generating a permanent brightness, or is it a temporary excess brightness that will fade as the changes settle in? And how bright would it be, for however long it does glow? Would the Grid remain like night with a full moon, or feel more like twilight/day?

[namesram]

It's a permanent change, but a very small one. The Grid will still be night, but slightly brighter than before: not quite twilight, but definitely up to full-moon brightness. (However, the Portal doesn't move and isn't visible from all parts/levels of the city, so there'll still be places completely reliant on city-light.)

[ram_xr71]

/nods. Good to know, mostly for Kip's sake.

[namesram]

Aww, poor Kipster.~~ At least maybe it'll give him hope that the system might get brighter in future?

[program_spark]

The smaller cities are gone? Will they come back eventually?

Side note: Is/was Indium a canon city or a G_L invented location?

[namesram]

That's a possibility; it'll depend how the game goes and what plots we come up with, but for now, they're safe elsewhere. The reason we removed them is that no player characters were living there or went there very often, and they kept being used in "now the villains can have an army of small-town NPCs" plots. We kept Bostrum because it had just been rebuilt and reopened, Arjia because it means so much to the ISOs, and Argon because we have characters who are originally from there, even if they don't live there now. Putting Arjia next to Tron City lets characters live there without having to travel for days to interact with other characters.

And yep, Indium was a g_l-invented city. The name was picked because it's a transition metal, like Gallium and Bismuth. The only player character who'd had anything to do with it was Tesler, but he's not in the game at this time.