The unexpected return of Zalhoid Beeblerock

[Spaceferring]

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Holy moly I didn't think this would still exist!

I had to go off for about 8 months, anyone care to bring me back up to speed?

Zalhoid looked down at the smouldering wreckage of his handmade starship. It hadn't, apparently, fared well in Alleyplanet's(?) atmosphere: he had had to heroically leave his craft halfway down and had Pushed himself down to sane speeds. Thankfully, his umbrella had functioned surprisingly well as a makeshift heat shield.

Zalhoid looked at the charred remains of his rain-shielding device.

He protec, he thought and tossed it away. Through an uncalculated coincidence, it hit an unnamed Dark Alleyist hiding in a bush, presumably to offer him cookies, in the face, knocking him down the cliff.

He attac, Zalhoid reflected as he watched the man hurtle down the sheer rocky side and frowned to himself. An alarming amount of people had wanted to give him cookies on the planet he had stranded himself on, through a freak accident while experimenting with cytonics. But that did not matter anymore. Zalhoid was standing on the very cliff supervising Alleycity. He grinned madly.

But most importantly, HE'S BACC! 

It was at this moment that the poor spacecraft behind him decided it had had enough with life and exploded, throwing him tumbling down the cliff.

 

[Archer]

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Zalhoid left at the end of Era 2. As a refresher, those events are chronicled here: https://alleyverse.fandom.com/wiki/Chronology.

After the release of Voidus, the main plot became run by the Bureau of Villainy (BoV). They initially operated through a shell corporation known as the Plasma Corp. The plot started with a big fundraising dinner, which dissolved into chaotic fighting. Unperturbed, the Corp went off and built an apocalyptic weapon, called the Vortex. It used the power of the Void to create evil stuff. This got the Dark Alley’s attention, as they are the traditional creators of evil stuff from the Void, and quite frankly, they felt insulted that someone was trying to steal their schtick. So the DA held a general meeting and declared war on the Corp. Meanwhile, strange abominations were being spit out by the Vortex. The guilds banded together to protect the Alleycity. Even TUBA and the DA united against their common foe. The BoV then activated their boss move, and released a bunch of supersoldier monstrosities to smash the city. The DA & co. fought back, defeating them in combat and wrapping the Vortex in aluminum to shut it down. The Phoenix, the same one that appeared in the Seven Day War, then was summoned, and it razed several city blocks. That’s how Era 3 wrapped up. (My thanks to ZincAboutIt, whose notes I’ve shamelessly stolen from to make this summary.) Some other shenanigans occurred simultaneously, including a voyage to see the Other Side of the Alleyplanet, which is mostly comprised of islands and feral mime tribes. Also, several weddings. 

After a brief time skip (a few months), Era 4 began. Out of character (OOC), everyone was itching to try out some new ideas, so for a while, we had a number of alternative genre threads going: a horror thread, a scifi, and a Western. I think something important happened in the sewers? But you’d have to ask someone else about that, I’m less up to speed on this era. Recently, the magic system of the Dark Alleys has been more developed on-screen, so if you’re interested in Voidmaking, the DA now has some guidelines and explanations kicking around. As I understand it, most threads right now are pretty contained, not directly connected to an overarching main plot any more than they usually are by characters and certain global events. But as I said, RP current events are no longer my forte. Sorry I can’t be of more help there, I suspect you’ll need to ask about threads on a case by case basis to get an idea of what they’re about. 

OOC, the moderation team now consists of Voidus, Sorana, and I think I am here (Itiah), to accommodate the retirement of previous mini-mods such as Lord Meeker (Mraize), MacThorstenson, Kidpen, and myself form the RP. Overpowered characters are now more tightly regulated and discouraged. Our quick and dirty way of ensuring that is by ranking the power levels of characters based on an index listed in the second post of the character thread, but as usual, you’re expected to RP in a balanced and fair way to your other players. On that note, you’ll have to talk to one of the mods to get your character moved to the new character list, and re-evaluated and approved. 
Guild-centric activity has diminished, along with the OOC limitations on being a member of multiple guilds that came with them. Generally speaking, the game has shifted from being combat oriented to being more RP and character development focussed. (At least, very few people are assassinated anymore.)

Your writing style still conforms to the RP standard, so I’ll skip over commenting on that. I will however note that there’s now a ban on offering cookies in the Introduce Yourself! threads, and on spoiler tags in signatures. RP discussion either happens in the Chat Thread, the relevant thread (in quote boxes), the Homeless PM, or on our discord server (link in the Guide to the Alleyverse thread). And you can hide your own posts now, so no more cringey double post mistakes!

Hope this helps. And welcome back!

 

Edited January 3, 2020 by Archer

[mathiau]

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Also atium was found under the city (though your character can't know it)

 

[kenod]

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The alternative genre threads were era 3, not 4 (given that we're currently in 4). Other than that, can I say I really like your description of the DA there Archer?

 

[Archer]

1 hour ago, kenod said:

The alternative genre threads were era 3, not 4 (given that we're currently in 4). Other than that, can I say I really like your description of the DA there Archer?

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Good memory, yes that's correct. 

And thanks! Y'all are fun to describe? Like one of those big charity organizations, with vast resources and extensive internal oversight, but your mission statement starts with 'hey, you know what'd be cool...' and quite intentionally avoids any discussion of ethics, because you assume that all of the minions reading it will be of the same lawful evil mindset. A lot of the DA is just people who are genuinely confused when someone tries to stop their experiments on moral grounds. "Yes, I know he'll die. That's the point?" etc. 

But I digress.

 

[Spaceferring]

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Thanks a lot @Archer, I really appreciate the effort that went into this! I see the craziness has not diminished in any way. I think I'll just read the top threads and see what's going on!

 

[kenod]

44 minutes ago, Archer said:

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Good memory, yes that's correct. 

And thanks! Y'all are fun to describe? Like one of those big charity organizations, with vast resources and extensive internal oversight, but your mission statement starts with 'hey, you know what'd be cool...' and quite intentionally avoids any discussion of ethics, because you assume that all of the minions reading it will be of the same lawful evil mindset. A lot of the DA is just people who are genuinely confused when someone tries to stop their experiments on moral grounds. "Yes, I know he'll die. That's the point?" etc. 

But I digress.

 

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Ethics? What are those?

Also, it's makes it even more funny that the DA is basically the group acting as a police force in case stuff really gets out of hand. So the insane scientists are the folk who are called upon to keep everything running when someone tries to destroy the world. And it makes sense too, since they're the only group who are so powerful that getting more power doesn't interest them, so they normally can't really be corrupted into letting things happen, while the strength of their leaders means nobody is going to stage any internal coups like with the GBs, and unlike TUBA they actually have the necessary power to deal with the really bad stuff.

It's kind of funny, actually, TUBA, the GBs and the DA's goals make them fairly good complements when working together during a crisis, since TUBA's focus on keeping people safe from the DA means they have a lot of public trust and capability of reaching out to people, like with the evacuations during the Plasmacore incident, while the DA has the abominations to counter any large armies, while the GBs can move in quickly to take care of the bigger targets.