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[Shelved][✓] The Ascended - The Tears of Aeriel [Rewrite]


Farryn
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5 hours ago, Treshure said:

 

lol yes it is

you’d like to pretend your average necromancer is morally conflicted and involved in engaging arcs, but they are just as unoriginal and cliche as the generation of magic users that preceded them

 

holy magic vs unholy magic has been the bane of good rp for years on this server. let it die and move on to something better

Of course the “average necromancer” have moral conflicts. Few dark arts user kills blindly, some might not hurt children, some might not hurt elderly people and so on. I would seem that you have an issue with magic and their users in general, am I right to assume so? Holy versus Unholy magic is the bane of roleplay you say, what would be the next move onto something better and what would that be? 

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I have several questions to raise, and if they can be answered I think overall will make this more digestible for the average player. Please don’t respond with a quote of the lore, or ‘read the lore’, I would like to see a thought out response to each question.

 

  1. What purpose does the Ascended fulfil in the current climate of the server and it’s lore, that isn’t already overlapped by other areas?
     
  2. How does this rewrite make their purpose more defined for both the individuals who play Ascended and those who witness them?
     
  3. What issues do you believe is it that made the future of the Ascended unable to continue without an overall reformation?
     
  4. In what way does this rewrite hope to amend any of the past issues that the past iterations have encountered?
 
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I will start answering the last two questions first.

 

39 minutes ago, Sky said:

What issues do you believe is it that made the future of the Ascended unable to continue without an overall reformation?

 

Soulfire: The concept of magic fire is currently used by a really lot of magics and is very unoriginal, also the LT asked us to move away from targeting dark creatures and modified it so soulfire could burn everybody. With both of these things in mind we decided to move away from it and use a different type of energy.

 

Strict tenets: They limited the Ascended too much and didn't give room for dynamic development (for example the political tenet)

 

Disconnection: The last system that we had for disconnection was awful and  super abused, basically you could infuse a black ember into a weapon, give that weapon to someone else and that person disconnect an Ascended with it.

 

Regeneration: Immortality + Super Regeneration is simply too OP and made us act fearless knowing that whatever happened to us would have little impact to our characters and also took away the possibility of healing our own wounds.

 

Infusions: Too many infusions were created and sold, which wouldn't have been an issue if players would roleplay it properly and get them recharged often, but that wasn't the case.

 

Master Sage: Someone being a "T6" Ascended is not good and nobody should habe such privilege. Plus this created some sort of forced centralization around them.

 

Hallowed grounds: Only 1 could exist at any time which lead to it being able to be harbored by a few Ascended and limit the rest of the Ascended to be stuck at T3 since they can't undergo the ritual of Stoking which must take place into it.

 

Soulfire braziers: all the lower tiers of it are almost useless and even the most powerful only limits the corruption of souls into a radious, limiting the rp of other players.

 

Soulmending: A too easy way to heal someone, and many times abused by just taking the wounds of others and just going AFK or logging out while the wounds heal.

 

Also a lot of drama just made a big part of us just stop using the magic for some time and instead start to work on a rewrite.

 

1 hour ago, Sky said:

In what way does this rewrite hope to amend any of the past issues that the past iterations have encountered?

 

- Well, the removal of everything that i listed above this along with more freedom tenet wise is a good start i believe (like now Ascended being able to get into politics)

 

- Ascended won't need to be forced into one single order and instead will be allowed to be on their own or create their own groups if they wish so without constant threats of disconnection.

 

- Disconnection will only be a thing if they break tenets, which would also handicap them if they don't look for redemption and undergo the Trial of the Damned. 

 

- A really lot of new spells to support other players with none of them being purely offensive.

 

- Handicapped regeneration and partial sterility to balance immortality.

 

Also this rewrite will bring a lot of fresh air to the playerbase and many will start to play their characters once more while also new players will integrate into it.

 

1 hour ago, Sky said:

What purpose does the Ascended fulfil in the current climate of the server and it’s lore, that isn’t already overlapped by other areas?
 

 

Rn with the current lore? The purpose is the same as always, fight the dark, avoid souls getting corrupted etc. But that lost meaning and importance with the passage of time and it became boring to play.

 

1 hour ago, Sky said:
  • How does this rewrite make their purpose more defined for both the individuals who play Ascended and those who witness them?

 

With the rewrite the purpose of the Ascended will be ensure the welfare of the descendants and their souls, making sure that they are mature enough at the moment that they pass into to the afterlife. The way of doing so is not scripted in the lore and is open to the different points of view of the different Ascended and their rp, but by no means we plan to be protagonistic, just fulfill our purpose in the daily basis with small things that together produce meaningful rp and fun for other players.

(Purpose doesn't necesarily makes a magic good or bad, is what you do with it what creates good rp for others)

 

I hope my answers helped you to understand it better : )

 


 

On a side note to those concerned by the community and potential powergaming:

 

If the lore is accepted i am totally down to work alongside the LT to ensure the proper use of the magic, and if you think that someone powergames i ask you all to report them so they can be explained what they are doing wrong. And in regards to toxicity and bad behavior you can always message me and i will try to do my best to solve such.

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20 hours ago, Jentos said:

Yet my boy I’m going to have to agree with Pess, evil isn't necessarily bound to “dark” magics, and furthermore, the concept of anything being evil is retarded. It doesn't exist, nothing is black and white. 

Evil isn’t bound to dark magics, but all dark magics are inherently evil. Nothing is black and white, but dark magic users have inarguably black intentions.

But anyway, a group like the Ascended whose purpose is just anti-“evil” is completely ignorable, because you’ll argue that they’re ethically summoning demons or humanely creating mutated children. This type of purpose/morality is open to abuse, as you can see now with the current Ascended aiding Naztherak. I am personally dead tired of the Ascended being shoehorned in to so many incidents because they’re some kind of powerful protagonist order keepers, separate from the actual roleplay of players and nations. Sentient dragonkin (Dragaar, Azdrazi) are outright smarter and more engaging, as they are integrated with (for the most part) Horens and Humanity – their “group morality” or purpose is simply pro-Human, pro-Horen.

Edited by pbuh
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5 minutes ago, pbuh said:

Evil isn’t bound to dark magics, but all dark magics are inherently evil. Nothing is black and white, but dark magic users have inarguably black intentions.

But anyway, a group like the Ascended whose purpose is just anti-“evil” is completely ignorable, because you’ll argue that they’re ethically summoning demons or humanely creating mutated children. This type of purpose/morality open to abuse, as you can see now with the current Ascended aiding Naztherak. I am personally dead tired of the Ascended being shoehorned in to so many incidents because they’re some kind of powerful protagonist order keepers, separate from the actual roleplay of players and nations. Sentient dragonkin (Dragaar, Azdrazi) are outright smarter and more engaging, as they are integrated with (for the most part) Horens and Humanity – their “group morality” or purpose is simply pro-Human, pro-Horen.

Yeah, thats kind of what I was trying to imply

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put up the coat

also reply ford’s post and my post, we need to know why you won’t put up the coat and why you fabricated some kind of bizarre protagonist fluff to justify this rewrite

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6 hours ago, bigcrazy said:

put up the coat

also reply ford’s post and my post, we need to know why you won’t put up the coat and why you fabricated some kind of bizarre protagonist fluff to justify this rewrite

Because you are entitled to take away other people's fun because you think their "purpose" is dumb.

 

And because why else would there be a drastic shift in the lore like this story wise? It's not even us. It's Aeriel. Last I checked Tah straight murdered the daemon of chaos and absorbed her power that one time. This isn't exactly unprecedented stuff.

 

Then the golden lance from the paladins @setherien way back when. 

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3 hours ago, Demotheus said:

Because you are entitled to take away other people's fun because you think their "purpose" is dumb.

 

And because why else would there be a drastic shift in the lore like this story wise? It's not even us. It's Aeriel. Last I checked Tah straight murdered the daemon of chaos and absorbed her power that one time. This isn't exactly unprecedented stuff.

 

Then the golden lance from the paladins @setherien way back when. 

 

"Well they did it so we should do it too"

 

one of the weakest excuses I've ever heard, that doesn't justify fabricating world lore

 

very disappointed in the quality of writing 

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The Ascended have been great these past maps. However, it is time for new change! They have served their original ooc purpose and have essentially guided us to this point in their history where many believe they can’t go anywhere but down. I’m neither for nor against them remaining but it’s time for the LT to take a serious look at this and ask if we really need it beside the two holy magics that already do everything for them.

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10 hours ago, Demotheus said:

Because you are entitled to take away other people's fun because you think their "purpose" is dumb.

 

And because why else would there be a drastic shift in the lore like this story wise? It's not even us. It's Aeriel. Last I checked Tah straight murdered the daemon of chaos and absorbed her power that one time. This isn't exactly unprecedented stuff.

 

Then the golden lance from the paladins @setherien way back when. 


both this and tahariae’s murder/banishment of the chaos god are lazy efforts to give weight to deities without an actual impact being made in roleplay. like what even is the purpose of this explanation here? just saying “because of x and y the flame of the soul god faded” wasn’t good enough, so much so that the only satisfying option was to write something that never happened? what does that provide for anyone? maybe that’s one of the reasons you guys need to put up the coat, because there’s still this gross protagonist mindset. your soul god is not the savior of the planet

and the paladins weren’t even supposed to make it beyond being an event entity, but somebody drummed up the not so great idea of extending them beyond their original purpose, so they stayed around and their event-based history afforded them more than what a player magic originally should have. does this sound familiar?

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I finally decided to take note of all the talks in here, and I’m not impressed with the ‘Remove the Ascended’ feedback. Very ashamed of the community in fact. However, I will do my best to answer all of the major topics that were brought up.

 

Shelve the Ascended

That’s a question that I had hoped many people arguing for the shelving this particular magic would explain in detail. I am well aware the Ascended lore has been argued against, but most people who argued against this lore did not give any clear explanation. What I’ve seen is simply: “They’ve been around too long” and “Their purpose is over and done with.” If we’re going to follow these two reasons as excuses for removing a magic, then the same can be asked towards the Paladins, the Druids, the Shades, Frost Witches – what is the purpose of the Frost Witches? The Shades? The Paladins? The Druids? The druids and paladins have been around since the server’s early days and are still going strong. Many of these magics have been around for a while, the druids especially, and have changed away from their own original purposes to change and develop with the growth of both the server and its lore. In time, many of these magics gain a community around them that wishes to keep the magic going and thus they rewrite and update the lore.

 

What I am trying to say is: The whole point of this rewrite is to ensure the Ascended held a new purpose, one different from the previous purpose of eradicating dark beings. Our new purpose to ensure descendants live long enough for their natural deaths, and assist people in major event lines as the supports. Not the heroes or whiteknights (or so help me if I see an Ascended being a white knight) – the supports in the background.

I don’t see either major arguments for removing the Ascended as valid, given many other magics on the server do not hold as much purpose, other than being there to give forth a new experience to players, as well as different takes in using magic – which is what the Ascended Lore is going for.

 

Ascended and Demons.

I’ve noticed a user arguing about this and stating it as a reason to remove the Ascended. As the only Ascended who has been actively working with the Naz playerbase in RP – I must disagree when it was voiced that all of the Ascended are working alongside the demons.  I will explain why.

 

Only myself and my character, Elvira, has been working with the Naz but I am willing to explain why. No other Ascended have been involved.

 

Elvira has been working on ensuring the Naz users she knows do not use their magic on any descendants and that no new demons are created. One major Naz character has voiced his concerns for his family by his actions and has requested my character to aid him in turning over a new lead, away from being destructive and cruel (and this is true as the user OOCly confirmed he was aiming for a redemption/new leaf with his character). She is VERY aware that she is stepping on thin ice, I am very aware also but I am willing to accept any RP consenquences. The Ascended Sages (the guys leading each sect) were alerted by myself/Elvira and they told me to be extremely careful in what I do, but have shown support that I am trying out a new alternative than the ‘Kill them all’ route.

 

When it came to the September Fight – Elvira was there with the Naz, making sure they did not consume any souls that were lost that day, and to make sure none of them stepped out of line. Why didn’t Elvira or an Ascended who was with me fight them? We had a giant tree demi-god trying to destroy the city – better to focus on one enemy than have two. This was more logical as it meant we were more focused on trying to weaken September, rather than my character and the Naz fighting the other while September tried to destroy the town.

 

Personally, my RP with the Naz playerbase has been brilliant and has pushed my character to the edge at times with trying to play neutral. It’s better than having to kill them, and also gives my character access to a vast range of information. I am honestly happy with how the roleplay is going.

 

What I am not happy about is my IC decisions being used OOCly to argue against the community I am in. Judging a group by the actions of one or few, no? Most of all: Roleplay is Roleplay, and my character’s actions should not be used to argue against the lore, when said actions do not even affect or hold any weight in determining the lore’s success or failure. If you do not agree with how my character acted – then handle it in ROLEPLAY. Do not try pulling it into OOC in any form, unless you want to talk more on the subject in a private conversation. (seriously, just let me know in PMs or discord that you want to talk and I’m happy to talk about this topic)

 

Most of all, and I am repeating this – Do not consider my actions that of the Ascended. I am only one member of the community and my actions are my own, not my community’s. I do not appreciate any users trying to use my actions as an excuse to blame the Ascended, and it makes me ashamed members of the LotC community are willing to go down that route to invoke unnecessary blame on a group.

 

The Ascended Hate

I’ve seen all of the hate in here and I want to know why exactly this hate has come across. However, those who elaborated their hatred of the Ascended did not explain why they hated the community. So I am giving a chance for those people to explain their reasons to me. I am aware it is something to do with the community, and I hope to try and take that feedback into ensuring that the Ascended become better than before.

 

Neither myself or the Ascended community cannot make any big chances unless people let us know about a particular matter. Such as if an Ascended has been acting wrongly OOCly, or have been powergaming, etc, etc. These matters need to be brought up so that we can do our best to fix them, and disguising them amongst countless of hateful words only makes me feel more ashamed of myself that I’m an Ascended and someone hates me for being an Ascended RPer.

 

I cannot take someone seriously if they are just being downright rude about a particular subject, and it makes me more inclined to not listen to them. So please be more formal and polite about how you word your issues with the Ascended, and don’t hesitate to just let us know so we are aware of what we could do better so we can do better. I am aware of some of the faults within the Ascended and I am aiming on fixing them, but these matters cannot and will never be fixed within a single hour or day. These matters take time to work and improve on.

 

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35 minutes ago, Farryn said:

The Ascended Hate

 

If will do you absolutely no good if you take anything people say here as ‘hate’, even people using personal insults (which I don’t agree with) are doing it for an overall reason and that reason can be looked into by simply reading what they had to say. Everything from five word responses and five paragraph responses is still criticism that should be taken onboard. Hate is one of the strongest emotions and rarely is it unjustified to the person, everyone has their own reason and you should read into that reason rather than just labelling it as hate and disregarding it. Just some advise.

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1 hour ago, Farryn said:

If we’re going to follow these two reasons as excuses for removing a magic, then the same can be asked towards the Paladins, the Druids, the Shades, Frost Witches – what is the purpose of the Frost Witches? The Shades? The Paladins? The Druids?


you actually make a valid point here – you’re right, most if not all of these things should cease to exist, for reasons other than whether or not they’ve retained their original “purpose”. here is a comprehensive list of their purposes though:


the paladins exist for no reason because they were spawn as a holy magic copy-cat event copout, the druids exist because they at least proliferate their numbers and uphold some kind of druid-like cause that tells some kind of story, the shades exist to fulfill an edgy mental illness niche that has been way overblown with the recent work that was done on it, and the frost witches exist purely for antagonistic purposes. the ascended existed to fight iblees when iblees attacked aegis, they fulfilled their only proper purpose (kind of, they ended up failing), and now they’re literally hanging by a thread because you guys need to make up new reasons as to why your magic should stick around

 

1 hour ago, Farryn said:

What I am trying to say is: The whole point of this rewrite is to ensure the Ascended held a new purpose, one different from the previous purpose of eradicating dark beings. Our new purpose to ensure descendants live long enough for their natural deaths, and assist people in major event lines as the supports.


like for real? this is the best reason to keep this magic alive, even when the magic isnt remotely like what it was beforehand? its like you wrote something completely new and slapped the name on it to preserve what justified keeping your group unified. why does a magic need to be given plastic surgery and then kept on life support in order to fulfill these extremely mundane things that normal people without magic can do themselves? not everything needs to be streamlined by magic, and this is among the most prime examples of it – if the entire idea is based on “helping people along” and “assist in event lines”, do you really need magic for it?

imagine the genuine experiences you could inspire if you guys just put up the coat, accepted this effort as a dead weight, but remained unified as a group with the same goals you just listed here because you believed you could help people without the crutch of a magic? the ascended being deprived of their heavenly graces and being reduced back to normies, and then deciding to roam around as a band of grizzled guardians driven by salvaged good will is ten times more appealing to me than just another iteration of the same group with the same name and different sparkles to justify the same rp.

 

if the magic is the only thing that keeps your group together, is it really worth it?

Edited by bigcrazy
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The very idea of a ‘good’ faction clashes with everything good about roleplay. Namely that we don’t have one grand narrative, but a sprawling web of different character arcs and intrigues. Can anyone, even someone who dedicates their life to fighting evil, truly be said to be objectively good? My character found out over the course of his life on Atlas that even the evil characters of the LoTC have emotions and feel pain, that it wasn’t objectively right or even really sane to dedicate his life to stomping them out. 

 

If I’m being honest with you Farryn, it’s always going to be sort of hackish that you have a guild that is objectively good in the hazy, morally complicated setting of Atlas. That issue isn’t made any better when you add a bunch of convoluted lore that people don’t understand. Your lore explains everything from the Ascended’s origins to the details of their rituals, but it fails to explain why they should exist. Why one group should live rent-free in the server lore while everyone else has had to work to secure even the tiniest niche for themselves. Why their intentions are fundamentally good and not just self-serving. The reason Paladins and other holy mages can be compelling is that there’s a perspective where they aren’t actually good characters. There’s no room for this with the Ascended. They have to be good, and you have to believe they’re good, or you’re bad.

 

The moment that really formed my opinion about the ascended was after that Gazardiael event like a year ago. The ascended are supposed to be good people, but they led a massive group of people to certain death for reasons only they could possibly understand. The Ascended, by all rights, should be shunned. The public opinion of the ascended should be mud. My character, at the very least, hates them for both failing to protect his home, Bastion, and for leading him to near death against a literal god. They have lived through so many scandals without a scratch of retribution for it, and yet their lore is constantly rewritten, constantly face-lifted, with none of the parts that would make them compelling or multidimensional added in. 

 

I would urge you to rewrite their lore again, this time not adding anything new, not creating any new lore out of whole cloth, but rather honestly presenting the Ascended’s history with a bare bones explanation of the source of their magic and their powers. I think that would be a lot more interesting and a lot less controversial than what you’re presenting right now.

 

36 minutes ago, bigcrazy said:

imagine the genuine experiences you could inspire if you guys just put up the coat, accepted this effort as a dead weight, but remained unified as a group with the same goals you just listed here because you believed you could help people without the crutch of a magic? the ascended being deprived of their heavenly graces and being reduced back to normies, and then deciding to roam around as a band of grizzled guardians driven by salvaged good will is ten times more appealing to me than just another iteration of the same group with the same name and different sparkles to justify the same rp.

 

if the magic is the only thing that keeps your group together, is it really worth it?

Edited by xxx
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1 hour ago, xxx said:

Snip.

 

What many of you guys are missing here that we have stated a good few times at this point is that we aren't changing the lore for shits and giggles. The Lt are making us do it whether we like it or not. We decided to make the best out of that, a little change in purpose, etc. Lt don't like the holy VS dark. Besides, it's not objectively good. It's subjectively good in the eyes of aeriel. There are tons of groups on the server and in real life that feel they are objectively good and any of them can be argued against because there is no such thing. 

 

What you all have to keep in mind with these criticisms is that you are here to criticize the functional lore itself. Not whether or not we get to have our toys. The Lt are the ones asking for this in the first place so they clearly see a place for us, for paladins, and for clerics. They're insisting for a repurposing and remodeling is all. 

 

That's what we've done. Leave the world lore criticism to the Lt. The big ugly void monster being dunked on by a God with no action from her patrons is really their specialty and that's not one of the things they've really criticized. There is precedent. 

 

Not one of you have really taken a crack at anything else, for example, the majority of our lore. Some have conceded its pretty great you just don't like the ascended(tm) tag that goes along with it. Well, too bad. It has to be there. We aren't hanging up the coat. Why would aeriel suddenly pull her presence from the world? She wouldn't. It's not in her interests.

 

Her interests are to gather a bunch of decent folk who can help serve her purpose. Ferrying mature souls to the soul stream and ensuring they aren't corrupted. Yeah that goal is probably objectively good. The order on paper is probably objectively good. But here's the thing, most people are the hero of their own story whether labeled evil or holy. So whether or not ascended are a force of benevolence or not can be hashed out in your characters minds through their rp experiences. 

 

 

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