OOC Plot Discussion [Sep 2020]

[scension]

Hi friends! Since this game is shaping up to be about the players slowly solving the plot mysteries as well as the characters, and because things have been kind of rapidfire up till now, a couple of us figured that a post to collect our OOC thoughts on the various current mysteries might be useful. This is a post! Please use it for whatever you like - suggesting your own theories, suggesting stuff that your own character might not pursue for whatever reason but other characters might, a place to plot next steps if you prefer it to plurk or discord, it really doesn't matter /o/

Potentially relevant links:
- September mod investigations/questions where we've been getting/pursuing most of the clues
- most recent IC meeting log
- current IC common knowledge cheat sheet courtesy of Haki
- bonus activity submission page including the plot clues given as rewards
(tell me to link something else here and i'll do it)

I have put in some toplevels just for organisational purposes but feel free to make your own or go without!

Comments

MISSING KIDS

[scension]

[scension]

OKAY my current thoughts are:
- the hospital is sus af and holding the kids hostage for boba flavour testing Reasons Unclear, suggesting a human culprit unrelated to the storm and that arena of goings-on
- the beach buryings are a method of getting kids into poor enough condition to reasonably go to the hospital without obvious connection to a human
- possibly they are kept under false names if the parents aren't informed, since nameplates on the doors came up? possibly not?
- the spookings at the hospital then keep them in poor enough condition to stay there if they seem to be recovering
- since the drifloons seem to be wild (akira caught one) they may be manipulating them somehow? is that where the honey comes in??

i think that all of the evidence for this except the names thing and akira catching one has come up icly at one or the other meeting so far so if any of this seems useful for characters who are not fucking banned from the hospital, go ahead and take it /o/

[thaumewturge]

wait beach burials?

[scension]

atsushi and efi found a buried girl who turned out to be one of the reported missing kids, i admit that's a burial in the singular because they haven't found any of the others.....

[thaumewturge]

oh

oh no

Rhel found some very odd black sand on the beach, only went down like an inch but I have an even worse feeling about that sand now

[authoriser]

if it helps, some people dug up the northwestern beach to see if there were more bodies in the sand, and there were none

[compendiem]

The locations page isn't typically used for investigations but ANYWAYS, this might be a good thread to take a look at for the Drifloon and missing kids.

[infiltrationtools]

Actually my only plan with that going into it was to find out if the Drifloons belonged to a Trainer or not, but it all worked out. B)

[compendiem]

I'm glad he verified that one Drifloon and I hope he chucks Pokeballs at every single one he comes across, just to make sure ('':

[infiltrationtools]

Well I only need one Drifblim for my Ominous Wind-Baton Pass-Power Trip combo he wants to catch other Pokémon too!! Your suggestion will be taken into consideration

edit: today i learned drifblim does not learn ominous wind in generation 8 :/

[thetyger]

An overview of my missing kids investigations, because there were three...

- Atsushi and Efi found a hand sticking out of the sand at the beach. It was a four-year-old girl, still alive, who was then taken to the hospital. She woke up a week later, and they went to talk to her about the Drifloons; info here

- Townspeople and parents have said the kids go missing from the beach, and there were mentions of the Game Corner and the hospital. Atsushi and Sagi got no information at the Game Corner, but Drifloons sneak into the hospital in gift baskets to kids who are getting discharged, and scare them and make them sick again. The nurses note that the gift baskets show up during the day and the Drifloons wait until night to come out of them; info here

- Atsushi and Theo went to talk to the father of a missing boy (six-year-old Skyler). Skyler spent a lot of his time at the Game Corner with friends. He can't swim, so he supposedly stays away from the beach. They then talked to Skyler's friend Casey who lived down the street, who says Skyler did go to the beach at least once. More info from Casey here

Theories:
Someone is deliberately trying to get the children to the hospital, and if they can figure out where the gift baskets came from, there might be a lead as to who. Probably no connection to any other mysteries?

[thaumewturge]

see I'm wondering if the boba + kids aren't connected to the storm in some way

because like if someone's being Sketch and doing experiments, what better way to make sure no one finds out than a massive localized storm that keeps everyone trapped?

[thetyger]

I wonder if the Game Corner and boba shop are working in tandem. They're both making a lot of money during the storm, and the boba shop is new.

[compendiem]

intro log
- "Some of the daycare workers whisper about rumors of a pack of wild Drifloon seen around town whenever the rain calms down to a drizzle and luring little kids into the thick fog and getting them lost."
- "There are also whispers about the hospital, hushed words about how it's haunted by the spirits of the deceased and that when a group of Murkrows gather around a patient's window, it's to mark that person with misfortune and death."
https://pokespe.dreamwidth.org/493.html?thread=58861#cmt58861
- The targets are all children. All the ones who have gone missing are also all children.
- The old man at the Game Corner endlessly played the slots as if possessed. But he's dead now, and so is that lead.
https://pokespe.dreamwidth.org/493.html?thread=72173#cmt72173
- The old folklore about Drifloon dragging children to the afterlife is commonly known by everybody living on the island.
https://pokespe.dreamwidth.org/493.html?thread=72685#cmt72685
- The girl who got buried in the sand was alone when she found the Drifloon at the beach. It was raining and too dark to see clearly, and she remembers a blue/purple light, wind, and a voice, but not getting buried in the sand.
https://pokespe.dreamwidth.org/493.html?thread=544493#cmt544493
- Skyler, a 6-year-old boy who went missing, is friends with three other children: the aforementioned girl who went missing and got buried, another girl who went missing at around the same time (no further details obtained), and a boy who did not go missing.
- The boy who did not go missing is Casey, a 5-year-old with a Lotad. He denies knowing what happened to Skyler, but admits he, Skyler, and Lotad has snuck out to the beach before to teach Skyler how to swim.
- Skyler does not have his own Pokemon (not counting the family Persian) and has yet been unsuccessfully at catching one.
- (thread incomplete? idk if you guys wanted to ask anything else or that's the end of the investigation)
https://pokespe.dreamwidth.org/493.html?thread=974573#cmt974573
- No more bodies are found buried in the beaches. It can be inferred that this isn't the Drifloon's typical MO
https://teamboba.dreamwidth.org/1911.html?thread=87927#cmt87927
- According to Akira's Drifloon, the Drifloon collectively have been taking kids, the kids are not dead, and ??? about the kids being on the beach. When asked where the kids are, the Drifloon leads Akira to the hospital and circles the perimeter.

[scension]

.... i felt compelled to check and the one non galarian pokemon line that learns defog below lv10 or so is ducklett at lv6....... this is too game specific to be an actual clue but there is fog :|a

my thought about the beach was def off when framed like this i think

who do we have who would be likely to wait until night time and snoop around the hospital, would that be the next step in narrowing down where the kids actually went?

[infiltrationtools]

Rhel and Akira have a thread where they plan to do exactly that, snoop around the hospital!

more drifloon info

[thetyger]

A plot clue, that Atsushi will not make any sense of, but will tell people about. Are Drifloons the ghosts of dead kids just playing in the sand? Who knows?

[scension]

:|a they could also have stolen them from the kids who went to the beach...

[thetyger]

We'll see what happens. This ended up being played out here.

[authoriser]

re: murkrows at the hospital
assuming the murkrows aren't being lying tricksters, it looks like they're just being branded as the next unlucky black cats when all they want to do is play with the kids at the hospital.

they also appear to be a standalone case rather than being connected with the drifloons, because heck if they know what the balloons are doing.

[scension]

re the purple light: how useful it is at this point im not sure but sagi "sees" it outside the hospital twice in a drifloon encounter and goes on to see it again when baby yjh tries to lure a drifloon out so it sure is A Thing. what kind of thing? i don't know!!

[thetyger]

I read through those, and what stands out to me is the grin, tbh. A Pokemon that does the ghostly grin thing?

[scension]

there are a few pokemon that have big grins but i have been thinking about gastly since the grin came up in that thread: there was a gastly balloon in the first part of that investigation with atsushi, hsy found another prankster gastly in the hospital, it's purple, it's a gaseous pokemon so there wouldn't be anything for sagi to hit when he yeeted himself, gastly learns hypnosis naturally at a low level which would cause people to fall asleep, its pokedex entries suggest that it can also just make people faint if they're inside its body...

the main problem is i'm not sure how much of this counts as out of game pokemon knowledge and therefore how much counts as circumstantial :|a

[thetyger]

I thought about the Ghastly too since it was in the gift basket, so maybe they're in on it somehow. I think the association between them and a grin could be made icly, but probably not the hypnosis bit unless someone has a Ghastly...

[scension]

THERE REALLY WERE FUCKIN GASTLYS