Okay guys, it's time for the final part of the Melting Clock plot! The crew know that they need to destroy the Clock to stop it's affect, but they can't do it themselves. However, all is not lost! Because Stacy will have found a race that can - the Time Dragons.

So, who exactly are the Time Dragons?
Well, they're a powerful race of dragons that have a mysterious ability to manipulate time. A fully grown Time Dragon is about as big as a bus, and looks rather like they're made out of clockwork parts. They're also very haughty, view themselves as superior to other species, and pretty much don't care about going out of their way to help other people. Like the crew. Which means that they're reaction to the crew's request to destroy the Clock and save those affected is basically going to boil down to: "...What's in it for me?"

How will the mission work?
In essence, this is a diplomacy mission. There are four NPC dragons, and only one of them needs to be convinced. Each person on the mission will need to pick a Dragon, learn about their personality and wants through talking to them, and use that to try and figure out what they can offer them that the Dragon might agree to - and whether they're willing to actually offer that.

Each Dragon has a pre-set list of things that they will agree to. This could be the in form of trading them something that they want, or doing a specific action for them. Each one also has a unique list, so you can't take what you learn from one Dragon and apply it to another - they're all individuals. Crewmembers will also be able to travel between the Time Dragon's planet and Stacy during this time, so if they end up deciding to trade something that's on the ship, that's possible.

You also can't just go and ask them, "So, what would you destroy the Clock for?" The Time Dragons take the view that they should not have to tell you that - figuring out what they want is your job!

This is basically a case of 'whoever makes one of the Time Dragons an offer they agree to (and that the crew is willing to uphold) wins'. This mission - and the plot - will end when someone actually threads a negotiation out. So, potentially anybody who signs up for this mission could end up saving the day.

When will the mission start, and when will it end?
It will start this weekend - around the 3rd or the 4th. It'll last approximately one-two weeks, and when exactly it ends will depend on the crew's ability to negotiate.

But since the end of this mission will coincide with the end of the plot as a whole, deaging characters should take note that the end of this plot is somewhat variable. At the very least you'll have a week (and I'll bendytime if someone manages to negotiate before then), but after that the exact end date is not set.

Signing up!
So, you want to sign up a character for the mission? Awesome! There's no limit on the sign-ups for this, either in terms of overall characters or the number of characters each player can have. Characters with diplomatic, bartering, or negotiating skills will definitely be needed here.

If you're interested, or have any questions, just comment here!

Ok, so as some have probably noticed, I haven't been tagging and posting with Feldt here and goodenuff2kill. My work hours have shifted during the summertime and right now I'm a bit busy working on getting things ready for A-kon 22 here in Dallas. So I'm going to call a Hiatus from now until after the convention, which will be around the 12-13th of June.

I'll be back soon~ Expect some pics of shenanigans at the con...or better yet, if you live around Dallas, message me and we could possibly meet at the con! /nerd like that.

Okay, so I'm handling permissions for this on behalf of Will since it's both our mini-plot.

Basically, as Melting Clock draws to a close, Superboy is going to de-age so much he's going to be like...really close to de-aging out of existence. Taking advantage of the opportunity presented to him, Lex is going to make an attempt on his life.

Basically, in the leadup to this, Lex'll have been doing regular diagnostics at a regular time. He'll also have noted that a power coupling from medical looked like it needed repairs but put it in a low-priority repair for engineering during the time missions were going on so that it got overlooked just by happenstance. Since it never got fixed, he's going to run the diagnostic at its scheduled time but crank up the power so it fries the coupling and downs all the power for medical. A backup system will go up in a few minutes but it means the power would be out for the life support in the healing tanks. Fortunately, it's set to happen chronologically RIGHT when they all age up again, saving the lives of anyone whose life support gets cut off.

This needs permission from a lot of people for us to go forward with it, though. We have permission from the mods for it to be possible, and permission from Blue to start it kinda early and bendytime it so it wraps up by the time the dragon diplomacy part wraps, but we need permission from more people. So:

1) Is this okay with the engineering folks, since Lex would've put a repair notice in? It would have been low priority, and easily overlooked with the missions. The diagnostics would've been regular ones that he's always been doing.

2) Is this okay with other folks de-aging their people? If anyone else is going to deage their character to needing the medbay, they'd be at risk, too, but there's ways to keep them alive by hand until they age up again.

Which leads to 3) Is this okay with the medical folks? You'd have a mini-medical crisis on your hands to have your characters deal with with any characters that de-aged really small and needed medical support.

If everyone gives permission, we'll go forward with it. If not, we'll either try to find compromises, change how the plot works, or think of something else.

So please let us know if it's okay!