On Soap and Cleanliness

[BonesOfTheEarth 1563]

Lefkos would stroll through the high elven city. His nose wrinkled. Filthy. Filth, everywhere. He looked around and saw, past the nice clothes that those present wore, only the consistent lack of cleanliness upon the individuals. Perhaps, he thought, this is why they dress so nicely. To pretend the stink didn’t exist. To hide their greased hair behind fine jewelry and hats. Lefkos tried to turn his thoughts to other matters – like purity, for instance – but to no avail. He wretched and nearly vomited at the smell. To the astonishment of many, he turned and ran straight from the city.

 

Next came Irrinor. He rested there, free from the reek of Haelun’or, instead replaced by forest-y smells and scents. Trampled earth, cow ****, leaves, flowers. Any of it was better than where he was. So at last, he closed his eyes and rested. Or he began to, before his eyes open and he looks around again. A familiar stench had met his nose. A familiar stench indeed, of body odor and axe body spray. In a sudden fright he stood and ran, seeing people pass by. How foolish of him, to think he could escape the smell here. The sweat, left for days on end on outfits and allowed to rise up and invade every orifice of his body, coming from the citizens present.

 

Perhaps an ocean breeze would save him. Sutica came next. He walked in the city, not even bothering to care about the blatant idiocy and brainmelting powers of the people present. He took in a deep breath, smiling to himself at the smell of the ocean breeze, carrying with it salt. It seemed to drown out all else and he almost collapsed then and there – For he had not slept in days in his fleeing from the scent. But, on his descent to earth he caught himself. With wide eyes, he turned and fled, because even then the scent had returned.

 

He had no more options. He ran, into the wilderness. Far from civilization and from anyone else before at last collapsing from exhaustion. And so he slept, alone. A fitful sleep, with dreams... Dreams of soap. But even the thought of such a rare and non-existent element brought him a splitting headache. And then he woke, in the dead of night. The monster had crept up on him once more... The horrible stench. And that is when it occurred to Lefkos, that perhaps the smell came from him.

 

OOC:

This a meme, but... Un-shelf lye.

[Dont_Advertise 1602]

Please unshelf Lye so @MeteorDragon will finally take a shower.

[ronin_champloo 5951]

Mordithas Miravaris would look down at his flea-ridden and foot fungus. – His greasy hair slick and stuck upon his stained face. ”Bruh” He’d groan. – Peering down at his chest before falling unconscious at the stink. Mordithas would later wake up with severe foot fungus.

 

Haha, yes! – Meme!

[AlphaMoist 1707]

Lye isn’t shelved, it just straight up doesn’t exist. Maybe write lotc-ified lore for it...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

or just use some wacky fantasy excuse to make soap like come on this is a fantasy server who cares, animal fat infused with flowers or some **** idk

[squakhawk 7300]

uh oh stinky 

[Wand 932]

@Fury_Fire

 

[x]
 

Somewhere a concerned elf considers procuring cleanliness and haircare products. Perhaps Lorealf shampoo...

[MeteorDragon 2799]

9 hours ago, Tha_Mystery_Man said:

@MeteorDragon will finally take a shower

 

I TOOK A F***ING SHOWER

[Ducklingator 795]

Lilach lathers herself in layers upon layers of lavender perfume, unaware of Lefkos’ troubles.

[monkeypoacher 6993]

 

10 hours ago, TheAlphaMoist said:

Lye isn’t shelved, it just straight up doesn’t exist. Maybe write lotc-ified lore for it...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

or just use some wacky fantasy excuse to make soap like come on this is a fantasy server who cares, animal fat infused with flowers or some **** idk

 

((again with this totally brainlet excuse “you didn’t write lotc-ified lore for it... so it doesn’t exist...”

 

people don’t need to make lore for leaching ashes for lye or churning butter or whatever. it is a waste of time. this is **** that already existed that people can look up.

 

my fantasy excuse for making soap is that my peasant learned to save the ashes from his stove so he can have lye for soap and pretzel making. it doesn’t have to be some whimsical elves-only alchemy nonsense

 

why are you gatekeeping soap on a fantasy server? do you have literally nothing more productive to do?))

 

 

[Demented_Delila 1118]

A High Elf Physician cries softly as she boils water to pour over her table for the sixth time that day. Where is the soap she swears she had some years back? She does not remember... it was but an odd, distant dream- one that she misses dearly. Anything would be better then this.

 

In between it all she does her best to stay clean, pouring hot water and plant oils all over her body. What ever happened to the blessed thing that seemed to only exist in her dreams? What of the missive she wrote, warning for people to properly dilute lye when using it for cleaning? She doesn’t remember. It never existed. 

[AlphaMoist 1707]

6 hours ago, howard said:

 

 

((again with this totally brainlet excuse “you didn’t write lotc-ified lore for it... so it doesn’t exist...”

 

people don’t need to make lore for leaching ashes for lye or churning butter or whatever. it is a waste of time. this is **** that already existed that people can look up.

 

my fantasy excuse for making soap is that my peasant learned to save the ashes from his stove so he can have lye for soap and pretzel making. it doesn’t have to be some whimsical elves-only alchemy nonsense

 

why are you gatekeeping soap on a fantasy server? do you have literally nothing more productive to do?))

 

 

Lye is banned because sodium hydroxide is an extremely complicated chemistry thing. We didn’t care at first, but then someone began teaching people how to use lye to decompose bodies at an accelerated rate. People abused it, so it was axed. You want to use the lye found in wood ash? Great. Don’t call it lye. Call it wood ash. 

[monkeypoacher 6993]

3 hours ago, TheAlphaMoist said:

Lye is banned because sodium hydroxide is an extremely complicated chemistry thing. We didn’t care at first, but then someone began teaching people how to use lye to decompose bodies at an accelerated rate. People abused it, so it was axed. You want to use the lye found in wood ash? Great. Don’t call it lye. Call it wood ash. 

Sodium/potassium hydroxide is a salt of the conjugate base of water. It is quite possibly the least complicated chemical I can conceive of. Water minus one hydrogen nucleus. It is nearly ubiquitous and has been used by humans (at least in the form of lye, stove ashes mixed with water, filtered, and then evaporated) for 4000 years. There is evidence of people making lye soaps in cuneiform tablets.

 

Alkaline hydrolysis is a biological waste disposal process invented in 1888. It involves submersing a body in a concentrated solution of sodium hydroxide and heating it above 300 degrees C. This saponifies fat and breaks down peptide bonds in collagen, basically making the body soluble in water. it’s had some recent use in the funeral industry and it’s used to deal with prion-contaminated animal carcasses. I can find no evidence to suggest that it was used in LoTC’s time period. Can’t you ban that and not lye itself, which has existed long before the supposed techlock?

Were the people “abusing” lye to dissolve bodies accurately roleplaying this process? Did they write lore to discover it? How did they justify the knowledge that at extreme temperatures a body will dissolve in lye? Why does my peasant pretzelmaking roleplay have to get **** on because some people were roleplaying a creative albeit anachronistic means of body disposal? But that leads me to my next point.

 

Why does every creative bit of roleplay need your direct, rubber-stamped approval? I simply do not understand. Just because something can be abused, often in a scientifically inaccurate, powergamey manner, it needs to be “banned?” You claimed high elf acid was “banned” because people were using acid as a throwing weapon. In this case you’re describing something that isn’t a problem with the “extremely complicated chemistry” (high school/medieval peasant level btw) but with players making the jump from “well lye exists in the time period” to “I will roleplay dissolving a body in a vat.”

 

Which, by the way, I still don’t see the problem with. 

 

Nobody roleplays crime investigations. If you kill someone and leave their corpse in the street people won’t even roleplay moving the body away. What you’ve done by banning lye is **** on someone’s attempt at crime and forensics roleplay, which all this aside is a very mean and shortsighted thing to do.

 

Don’t think about roleplay too hard. I found this response really hard to write because I’m honestly in disbelief that we’re taking LoTC so seriously. That your team has nothing better to do than ban chemistry that it does not understand. That I can’t roleplay making soap, lmao.

 

P.S., what is the actual point of banning something if you’re going to allow a synonym for it? The “lye found in wood ash” is just lye. You can call it “leached wood ashes” or “caustic potash” or whatever but it’s the same thing and you could technically dissolve bodies in it I guess.

[TheGayGuardian2 109]

@TheAlphaMoist If one person abuses the system you just trash the whole thing because clearly one idiot doing something makes the whole thing stupid? 

[jolfrey 155]

What if there was a pandemic in the world as well XD