Important dates:
START: Tuesday, October 29th
END (deadline): Wednesday, November 13th (at 23:59 server time)

Background:
Unlike events that you may be used to, this Halloween event will not incorporate obsession-based click-mania games such as “click this button every 15 minutes for the next week”. We will have one or two chance-based games, but the real rewards will be based on creative expression.

In the short bit of time you’ve been exploring the Cave, you’ve learned a lot about our surroundings, whether through reading about our history, or through your own imagination and role play.  However, you’ve likely also stepped into unanswered mysteries that have left you wanting to know more, and wanting to know what is in store for our next chapter.

This Halloween, we write that next chapter: you have the opportunity to explore some of these questions, and to develop a deeper sense of identity.  Halloween is an important time for the inhabitants of the Cave, filled with traditions as well as unusual happenings.  We will guide you in developing the story and Canon of our Cave, and with the involvement of all of you we will construct a remarkable new chapter our first Canon “major event”.

Your objective:
Contribute creatively, working off of a given prompt (by our lovely writer Prose :D ). Contributions must be set within the backstory and must explore the prompt. They can be by way of written text, digital art or physical art, and so you can:
A) Write a story role playing with a partner or partners, or on your own
B) Collaborate on an artistic storyboard or comic with a partner or partners
C) Create one or more works of art (digital, physical, musical, etc)

Cross-medium teams (e.g. producing an illustrated role-play with writers and an artist) are very much encouraged!

Rules/Guidelines:
- Your setting and storyline must be Canon, working off both the backstory and prompt.
- Your stories must incorporate ineki on your profiles as main characters.
- You may use NPCs (like the bone monster) and made-up characters as long as they conform to the Canon.
- Groups can have a maximum of three people per medium.
- To receive a prize, your contribution must meet minimum participation qualifications by the deadline.

Minimum Qualifications:
Writing
At least 1500 words per person, a well thought out plot and minimal grammar / spelling errors.
Storyboard / Comic
All panels should be individually drawn, have interesting backgrounds as well as characters.
Length and complexity should be comparable to the effort of writing a 1500 word story per person.
Other artistry
This is harder to define due to the range of possible mediums, so use your best judgement.

(In drawn or 3D modeled art, include some form of action in your creation — have your subject doing something, not just existing)

Note: you don’t need to be an expert in your medium of choice, and if you’d like to use this opportunity to explore a medium you don’t typically work with, feel free! While we have drawn up guidelines above, the real requirement here is to (a) spend significant effort / time (at least as much as writing a well thought out 1500 word story) being creative from the prompt, and (b) be willing to share it with everyone else here. Of course, feel free to exceed the minimum requirements, and above all have fun!

Each group (or individual working on their own) will create their own thread in a special forum for the event. Please use the first post as a summary post, to indicate who is in your team and what each team member’s role and medium is, and also to maintain a short summary of the total contents of the thread.

Critique:
If your group would like to invite other members to critique your work, please create a second thread in the forum using the same subject, but prefixed with [CRITIQUE]. Include a link to your critique thread in your first post of your main thread, and a link to your main thread in the first post of your critique thread. Requesting and providing critique is encouraged, but it is not required.

Prizes:
If you meet the minimum qualifications, then you get prizes! :)  Here is what you get for completing the event:
- 1 White Candy Corn Bag (randomly contains one of the four Halloween mushrooms)
- 4 Yellow Candy Corn Bags (randomly contains one of the ghosts, chains, sigil, mushkin or birdy beads)
- 4 Orange Candy Corn Bags (randomly contains one of the candy corn items, gliders, lantern, rabies or hat)
- 2-4 ticket(s) in our Halloween raffle for more prizes!

Raffle tickets:
Each individual participant will receive two raffle tickets by default.

Each member of a team that requests critique will receive an extra ticket, and each individual participant that provides thoughtful critique will receive an extra ticket. As such, each player may earn between two (no participation in critique) and four (team requests critique, player provides critique) raffle tickets. Do not critique works (either publicly or privately) which do not explicitly request it. If you will be providing critique, ensure you understand how to express constructive criticism in a positive way. Conversely, if you are requesting critique, be prepared for… well… critique.

Prompt:
See here

Sounds interesting, but I’ve a couple of questions (which probably doesn’t surprise you in the least)
One: Am I right in thinking that this is a team only event? As in, no team, no participation? Or do we have the option to choose between the two?
Two:  Are the number and type of candy corn bags available to each member based on the number of contributions individuals / teams produced? It sounds like we’re required to produce something in all three mediums to get a shot at all three sets of rewards – is that the case?
Three: What happens if more than one person in a team individually creates something using the same medium? Does the team have to decide which contribution to use, and which to put on the backburner?
Four: Are we even allowed to contribute with all three mediums, or is it just one per group?
Five: Does the quality have an impact? Obviously it has to have effort put into it, but are we going to be penalized if our contribution is ‘inferior’ to that of other teams due to less experience with the medium?
Six:…I just hate odd numbers, ok?

Edit: Since when did the random Brit get first post? ._.

KeeperGreymuzzles:
1- You can participate in a team OR as an individual.  You do not need to be in a team.
2- Prizes are per individual.  So as long as YOU meet the minimum requirement of whichever medium you choose, then you will get the listed prizes.
3- Your team should collaborate.  If your team has two+ writers, figure out a way to divide the writing (or do it as a role play, where one person posts, and another responds).  If your team has two+ artists, you can either assign different aspects of art making, where the two artists make two separate pieces that tell a story/go together, or collaborate on a really awesome single piece (so one person does the lineart, and another person colors it in, or whatever works for your group).
4- Feel free to form a group where you’re going across mediums.. no need for the groups to be exclusively writers or exclusively artists.  In fact, we encourage mixing and matching abilities!
5- As long as you’re putting forth effort, we’re not deducting anything for inferior quality.  We think it’s cool if people try something they normally wouldn’t. :)

I have a question-

I personally don’t have any canon characters yet, but I have one in the queue for custom recreation. Or at least I assume she’s canon, it’s hard to know. Would I be able to use a pet I don’t have yet but is in the queue so I can participate?

Ack, I am actually ridiculously excited for this!!  I will have to set aside some time so I can actually produce a nice written work, but I am pleasantly surprised and really looking forward to an event that’s different from frantically doing something every fifteen minutes and stressing out about having missed every possible chance. xD

I still have one question.  As I think I understand it right now, you get all of the different kinds of bags if you complete the minimum requirement for your chosen medium.  But, I just want to make sure — it’s not like if you choose writing, you’ll get the White Candy Corn Bag, or if you choose the storyboard option, you’ll get the four Yellow Candy Corn Bags?  Everyone from every medium will get all of the bags?  I guess what I’m trying to say, it’s not like you have to do something from all three types of mediums to get all the types of bags, right?  Or do you?

Thanks for putting together this event!!  I cannot wait to see the prompt! <3

Why does this have to clash with NaNoWriMo? And on the first year ever that I’ve decided to try for more than 50k? And my first year doing NaNo where I have other obligations as well during November? I’m not sure if I can work on two creativity-heavy projects at the same time both with such tight deadlines and so little free time to focus on them… :(

But I really want a chance at one of those new colors and those items are awesome as well… So I guess I’ll be trying it. But I reserve the right to wail incoherently and possibly weep hysterically.

Insigne:
If the character you desire to use is in the R2 list, that’s fine. :)

Dulcette:
You’re understanding this correctly.  If you complete the requirement for any one of the accepted mediums, you get ALLLLLL the prize bags listed. :D

I’m glad you’re excited!  I’ve been really excited the whole time we’ve been developing this!! :D

Ahhh, I’m so excited that this is finally getting underway! :D

I also have a couple questions! 1), We need to adhere to canon for this, so does this mean our characters must be quad, or can we gloss over the “soft, furry animals roamed the grass, majestic feathered creatures ruled the sky, and scaled beasts lurked in the swampy dark” part of the backstory and consider the inhabitants to have been humans instead? And 2), do our characters have to have exclusively canon backgrounds, or is it okay to give them both a canon and non-canon story, so that they can fit into Mycena Cave’s world for site events like this, but also be used in non-canon role plays? Thank you in advance, I hope that last question wasn’t too confusing! :]

Nephele: yeah the conflict with NaNoWriMo is unfortunate, but there’s not much else we can do if we’re going to have a Halloween event that is going to happen before December. If you find the notion of coming up with two unique stories too taxing, I would encourage you to explore using other media for this event — perhaps join another group as an illustrator, make physical artwork, create and record a relevant song, or really anything other than writing, and let other people handle the creation of storylines.

Eluii: our canon doesn’t mandate that the ineki or other creatures be quad — this is generally left up to those writing the stories. As for non-canon entities, your characters need to have exclusively canon backgrounds for the purposes of the event. That doesn’t mean a character is disqualified if you have engaged in non-canon RPs, it just means that things that happened in non-canon RPs will be considered to have “not happened” in this context. If it helps, you can think of them as two different characters, which are in most respects exactly the same, but whose non-canon version has done more/different things.

PyroLuna: you’ll need to wait until Tuesday for the prompt ^^. As for the bags, the only information we’re releasing is what is in each bag. Probabilities may (or may not) vary.

Ohh! This sounds really neat! I like the idea of a more interactive type event rather than mindless clicking.

I gotta say that critiques make me a little nervous… not that I don’t mind critiques (they’re extremely helpful!!), but just that I’m so anxious I don’t know if I could open up my story to random people. I usually stick to people I trust. On the other hand, I really don’t want to miss out on any extra chances for prizes.. hmm. -wibbles-

Anyway, couple o’ questions!

1.) Say we have an ineki that we haven’t named yet on-site, could we still use them in our entry? I’m waiting for a specific date to name my Kheper girl, but I might want to toss her in as a side character. Would that be allowed or would I have to name her before the event ends?

2. Aside from the “main event” and the raffle at the end, will there be other ways to earn more goody bags?

wow I would love to make an RP
*read the backstory quite often*

How does it work? Just making a ‘search for partner’ thread in the classified Forum or is there a special Event Forum for this kind of ‘special RP’?

Corvani: Generally speaking, in Canon stories your character must be “finished” in order to be used (you can of course feature unfinished pets, but they’re unliving stone so can’t exactly do much). However, we’re temporarily relaxing this rule until we finish Round 2 of the character recreations. So to answer your question, in this particular event, yes you may use your unfinished pets. For future events, however, you will need to finish them before they can participate.

knochenherz: experiment with other media! Can you model stuff out of clay? Can do you paper-art? Do you sing? You can find a way to participate!

YvaiaTheDemon: *points to my post 3 posts up* feel free to use the Classifieds forum for this. Just post there saying you’re looking for a group for the halloween event, include what media you’re good at and which ones in particular you would most like to use for this event and see who pings you about it :) Alternatively, you could go looking for people who’ve already made posts looking for partners, and post in their threads asking if they’d be interested in grouping up with you ^^

This actually works much better with my schedule than I imagined.
Though I like short bursts of clicking mindlessly (because it can be fun when you interact with the main event thread too) this is a lot less pressure and time consuming. Of course, it will still take a good deal of time, just more… Creative and productive time, which is good for everyone involved!

Hmhm, I’m struggling with wanting to write by myself or find a group. I suppose I’ll look under classifieds to see who is participating <3

glitch: Ahh, that makes sense. Thanks!

What about my other question, though? I’m sure you guys don’t want to give away all of your secrets, but I’m quite curious. heh.

glitch

Is there magic/magic users in the cave?

When is this event set? Like, the year of the first re-awakening? Or can it be a fair while after?

I think you mentioned the cave being weird at some of the deeper points - can my story take place in some deep weird area?

Jingles:  We don’t have any specific rules about magic in the cave.  There is definitely such thing as magic (since a lot of the cave was created through magic), and magic beings (an example is the sorceress who turned all of the ineki into stone). 

This event is taking place after a fair while—there are already plenty of traditions, some of which Prose mentioned in the prompt.

Finally, yes, your story can take place in a deep weird area. :)

Uh. So, pondering what to do for the halloween event I’ve come up with some questions.
-what happens when one of the critters(inekis are all we have sofar) dies? Do they revert back to stone? Or is it that once they’ve awakened, they become fleshy and therefore once they die, they get memorials elsewhere in the cave for proper.. uh recycling D8?
-If we do visual artz and wish to incorporate “the lost”, is it okay to maybe make the statue look similar to…. a character not on mycena? Or should they just be vague, these lost? D:

feyers

-The ineki wouldn’t revert back into stone upon death.  They would just die.  And yeah, I suppose they would get memorials somewhere in the cave! hehe

-The lost would be in the shape of an ineki (or whatever other creatures like the drassilis that are in the cave that haven’t been released) since the other ineki would have carved it.  In the banner, the fox ineki is actually one of The Lost.  You don’t have to use one of your own ineki as a reference though (you can use a made up or outside character), since presumably your own ineki came to life just fine. ;)