Howdy Everyone!
So, going with the tradition of having Founder Birthday Challenges, I am happy to introduce my own challenge. My birthday is October 8th and I want to first offer some context for this challenge. When I was a child, I had my fair share of great birthday celebrations. With each of those, I had the pleasure of of having friends and family all gathering for a birthday. We would have a great dinner, sitting in the living room chit-chatting followed by some time spent around the "burn pile" telling stories and such while tree limbs and various other things burned. There were some amazing memories to be had. Every one of these amazing days, I had a cake where I made a wish and blew out the candles. So many of these wishes were such that I never wanted those days to end. This brings me to my birthday challenge for all of you.
The theme of this challenge is, what if your character experienced a day that never ended. What if your character woke up one day and experienced whatever that day had to offer only to find that the next morning, they woke up and that day repeated. Each day after, it is as if their lives were reset and that day continued to repeat itself over and over...and over...and over again. The only things that changed were a direct result of the choices they made each new day. Yet, every new day was reset so that nothing they ever did carried forward. Think of the movie, Groundhog Day, but with a more Mizahar direction.
So, that brings me more to the heart of this challenge.
Starting at the moment this is posted, the challenge will be to choose a single day within the current season where you do not have any other threads going on. At the 6th bell of the morning of that day, you begin with whatever comes your way. That day may be mundane or it may have some crazy events occur. The choice is yours. Whatever that day may hold, you go through it however you may. No matter what happens, the next morning at the 6th bell, everything resets and you end up repeated the same events that following day. The only things that change are based on your character's choices, reactions, actions, etc. NPCs will not remember what happened the previous day but you will.
So after the first day you experience, each new day will reset to the events of the original. Everything will happen just as it did that first day unless you choose to do something different. The first day goes as normal as in however you choose to start your story. On the second day, your character will notice something is off after the first couple of bells or so. As the second day progresses, they will begin to realize that the things they are seeing and experiencing are stupidly familiar. By the third day, they will quickly realize that they are experiencing the same events that happened the previous days. By the fourth day, they know something is up and that they are reliving that first day on repeat.
Each new/old day resets at the 6th bell every morning no matter if you are asleep or awake. If you are asleep, you awake and relive the same day over and over. If you are awake when the 6th bell strikes, you experience a disjointed flash and events of the day start over.
Some interesting things that you will discover include; no matter what you say or do, everything resets on the 6th bell each new day. If you say or do things one day, they do not carry over to the "next day". Yet, you remember each day that you lived through even if nobody else does. If you share a thread with another PC, you share that experience and remember each other and what happened during your shared encounters.
During this challenge, you can also die. If you die during this special day, you will awake the next day at the 6th bell with no physical signs of dying the previous one. The mental images remain and can and likely will create some amount of trauma. Regardless, you will still be alive that next day.
This creates so many opportunities. You can kill your character many times over in unique ways. You can increase certain skills in immense ways by doing many threads where you decide to better yourself knowing that the risk is effectively removed from the equation...at least in the long term. You can say and do things that you would never have before since you will eventually realize there are no repercussions. You can try to convince NPCS that you are going through something really messed up and they may try to help you yet, in the end, they can't do anything and they will forget the next day at the 6th bell. You and every one and everything that surrounds you seem to be stuck in a never-ending loop.
That said, do avoid use of copy and paste to get through the days. Each day can be similar to the other but should obviously be different as you realize what is happening. You don't know why or how long it will last though. All you know is that by the 3rd or 4th day, you are reliving that first day over and over again.
While you could go with a mundane boring 1st day, I imagine that some amount of excitement for your character will allow for quite a bit of creative changes with each following day.
Each day should be its own thread. So don't try to fit several days into one thread. Each day should be its own short story with your character experiencing and growing from their repeated yet altered experiences.
Now, for the nitty gritty....
This begins now, the moment you see this post. As for when it ends...just like your character, you will not know. At least not concretely.
This challenge will last, at least a week. From October 8th until Octover 16th. That being said, I have celebrated my birthday the entire month of October. What that means for this challenge is that it could go all the way to October 31st but you don't know for sure. So, write your hearts out go as far as you want with this. Maybe it ends on the 16th, maybe the 31st. That depends mostly on you, the players and what you feel you need to get the most out of this and how much you are willing to write. You test your character to the furthest extremes with this or you can have a small, strange encounter and move on. I do hope for the first choice.
Now for solid requirements. Considering the scale of this challenge, I am setting a minimum of 10,000 words. That is roughly 4 solid threads of 2,500 words a piece or the equivalent of roughly 4 in-game days of storytelling. I would hope that you go far beyond that and you could very well have three weeks to play with. 10k words will get you the minimum reward for this challenge yet it won't be anything near what you could possible attain. I can assure you though that if you take this above and beyond that the rewards will fit the effort. That is not to say each thread needs to be 2,500 words. However, each thread should equal a single day and have a good amount of content to detail what your character is experiencing each time the 6th bell strikes.
Finally, this challenge effectively only applies to a single day in the season. Thus, it will not affect anything else you may have going on during the season. Continue your stories, posts and threads outside of this particular day as if this one never happened.
The in-game reason for what is happening to your character will be revealed at the end of the challenge although I can't promise you that it will be IN-GAME knowledge. The mystery is more fun
If you have any questions on any of this...at least the story/writing part, do please ask. I hope you enjoy this challenge.
On a personal note, love yourself, find whatever happiness you can in life and celebrate just being alive. No matter what that life throws at you, your birthday, the anniversary of your entering this world, is an occasion that is worthy of joy. I take most of my birth month off of work just to take a step back and enjoy what it is to be here. Take time for yourself even if it IS only for a day. Thank you all for being a part of Mizahar and thank you all for choosing to be a part of our world.[/indent][/color][/googlefont]
