[✗] [Lore Amendment] Corcituri

[__WaterFox__ 631]

Previous:

 

Salt (in pure granular form or at most diluted as saltwater; not simple sand or salted foods) will will boil the blood of corcitura, causing it to fizz and steam whilst shooting searing pain that feels akin to being set on fire through any wound it’s poured into whilst exposure to the eyes can blind corcitura for up to a narrative hour. Weapons treated with salt will leave fizzling wounds on corcitura who have suffered skin-breaking blows, causing them to suffer in a similar fashion to undead victims of aurum weaponry. The presence of refined salt not used to draw cuts or mixed with their blood will be at most uncomfortable to Corcitura, having no impact on their bare skin. 

 

 

New:

 

Salt (in pure granular form or at most diluted as saltwater; not simple sand or salted foods) will boil the blood of corcituri, causing it to fizz and steam whilst shooting searing pain that feels akin to being set on fire if in the proper quantity. If poured or splashed into the more sensitive and exposed organ of eyes the corcituri they will be blinded for 1 narrative hour. Outside of pouring salt into the eyes, the wounds must be inflicted by a weapon coated in salt. This salt must be dried onto the blade irp with at least 3 emotes of preparation and will flake off uselessly after being used. The telltale fizzing and excessive pain will not occur unless coming into contact with a significant amount of blood coming from an injury such as from an artery or several injuries that would result in one losing a significant amount of blood. Simply dropping salt into a wound will be as painful as it would be for any other mortal having salt dropped into a wound.

 

A corcituri may focus their passive recovery ability to prevent salt from causing the telltale burning and fizzing in minor wounds provided they have fed within the last 7 OOC days. Major wounds such as stab wounds and deep gashes as is incurred in a fight will still fizzle and burn with this ability activated. This ability occurs over 2 emotes during which being attacked or attempting to flee will render this process null. Once completed the effect will last for 3 OOC hours. Due to the intense nature , after this process is performed the corcituri will be barred from using this mechanic, transformation, or cloaking and enter a state of withdrawal till they can feed again. The state of withdrawal is similar to as if the corcituri had not fed in 7 OOC days and puts them at risk of frenzying.

 

Edit: Thanks for the suggestion Khol!

 

Purpose: 

 

In general rp mechanics that can completely forgo any detective work yield to abuse. Even if a person does not take the steps to properly investigate, perhaps even going off a singular rumor, they can just force the individual to take a test at which point they can either be found out or try running away and still be viewed as guilty. This kind of rp is at best cheap and at worst an easy way to cover up for any meta issues. The links below show the willingness irp (I am not accusing anyone of being malicious ooc) to use this mechanic in mass in a way that honestly is abusive. With how freely available salt is and how lacking in any consequences there are in using salt there really is no reason why this can't or shouldn't be done. Hopefully by changing the salt weakness it will force people to actually perform quality detective rp or do something as bold as killing or nearly killing someone based on a rumor.

 

Edited July 19, 2023 by __WaterFox__

[Unwillingly 11178]

i ask that people approach this conversation in good-faith because this topic has a tendency of being perceived as some petty darkspawn cope (i dont play a corcitura). also as a disclaimer I'm speaking in general of personal encounters I've witnessed and accounts I've heard of and not the posts linked on this thread

at face value it's really easy to look at an amendment like this and immediately interpret that the only purpose it serves is to let corcitura hide away perpetually undetected, but this is a a conversation I feel is long overdue for the quality of RP. recently it's become a rising "go-to" solution in multiple communities to filter corcitura through gates by salt-testing them, wherein this immediately exposes them as being a dark creature.

in past conversations I've had with people about this, the main argument seems to be: "it's the logical thing to do RPly," and while that might be true, we need to consider that what is most realistic is not always the most RP-friendly. we should be encouraging avenues of RP that drive exploration and player interaction, something that these one-off darkspawn gate test interactions actively subtract from. what this accomplishes is the 2 minute IC-gloating of a vampire's killing vs the much more prolonged barring of possible interaction before it even has the chance of happening

consider back in 2016 when holy mages had the ability to darkspawn test with holy flame that only harmed darkspawn. consider people being forced to stick their hands in holy braziers when going through the gates in cities. consider why this was removed and consider now how we've come full circle to the repetition of corcitura being filtered through every eternally closed-gate in an attempt to completely prevent them from interweaving with communities in the first place and how it makes even trying to be creative in how you meet your feeding quota a drag

I dont exactly think this amendment is a good solution, but another potential solution I had in mind would be for the corcitura salt-weakness only being applicable while they're transformed, denoting them as a revealed dark creature. this allows them to retain salt as a tangible weakness while removing the possibility of egregious gate-testing or impromptu patrols who just "happen" to approach you asking to cut your palm. this could even be coupled with an amendment stating that one corcitura cannot feed on the same person within x time as to encourage them to interact with new faces instead of the same player over and over again in the case this amendment is made

[Cloakedsphere 1462]

The same could be said for gold lined gatehouses, barring certain magical creatures from even entering a city. As unfair as it might seem, the issue isnt the salt itself or its implementation. Its the players themselves using OOC to drive their roleplay to single out certain characters they know OOC'ly are corcitura. Other players properly test people based on past experiences with them from specific regions. As an example, people from X city always get tested because there has been 3+ known corcitura that have been spotted and/or killed there. But because the mechanic is almost being abused to an extreme (apparently everybody that walks through a gate is being tested...? I personally havent seen this anywhere on LotC in over 3+ years. Most of the time if you dont act like, dont look like, and dont openly brag about knowledge of it, you get through gates without any testing.) we should seek to possibly punish the other half of players who properly use this mechanic?

Im 50/50. I understand what you're saying/trying to get past. But changing the mechanic to now having to almost kill someone to be able to test them (aka cut a major vein) is over the top and if you think that will stop people from abusing the mechanic, it most certainly wont. I'd maybe find another avenue to fixing this issue. Maybe by amending that over the years and as corcitura evolve, they have a built up immunity to the salts through valid roleplay. That would force the players entirely to go a different avenue and also achieve what you're looking for.

[sarahbarah 5023]

Speaking from the standpoint of a member of the Story Team, I think you pose valid concerns regarding bad faith roleplay and metagaming. Oftentimes players will be OOCly targetted in roleplay simply due to their reputation of playing spooks, and I appreciate your effort to mitigate that. 

 

On the other hand - speaking from the standpoint of a community leader, I don't think it's fair to link those forum posts on a lore amendment thread that addresses metagaming and bad faith roleplay. All of these posts were written in response to legitimate investigative roleplay that has occurred over the past few weeks, and thus it would make sense to mandate testing in this case. I know you previously mentioned that you did not garner any malicious intent by including the links, but I truly feel that linking them here undermines the players that authored these posts, and can honestly be quite hurtful to those involved.

[LatzMomo 2088]

Change it so that Corcitura can perform a temporary ritual that lasts like an hour or two which gives them immunity to salt tests. They can perform the ritual before entering gates but if they get ambushed with a random salt test prompted by an investigation, then they'll have to be more creative to explain their way out of the situation.

[__WaterFox__ 631]

30 minutes ago, sarahbarah said:

 

On the other hand - speaking from the standpoint of a community leader, I don't think it's fair to link those forum posts on a lore amendment thread that addresses metagaming and bad faith roleplay. All of these posts were written in response to legitimate investigative roleplay that has occurred over the past few weeks, and thus it would make sense to mandate testing in this case. I know you previously mentioned that you did not garner any malicious intent by including the links, but I truly feel that linking them here undermines the players that authored these posts, and can honestly be quite hurtful to those involved.

That is completely fair. I only included the links to emphasize how mass testing can be easily done and how the general ease of access lends to that kind of rp. I sincerely doubt the authors intended anything malicious ooc and will remove the links to make sure they aren't wrongly shamed.

[sarahbarah 5023]

9 minutes ago, __WaterFox__ said:

That is completely fair. I only included the links to emphasize how mass testing can be easily done and how the general ease of access lends to that kind of rp. I sincerely doubt the authors intended anything malicious ooc and will remove the links to make sure they aren't wrongly shamed.

 

i really appreciate that. Thank you for being mindful about it! Have a good night <3

[__WaterFox__ 631]

44 minutes ago, Cloakedsphere said:

Im 50/50. I understand what you're saying/trying to get past. But changing the mechanic to now having to almost kill someone to be able to test them (aka cut a major vein) is over the top and if you think that will stop people from abusing the mechanic, it most certainly wont. I'd maybe find another avenue to fixing this issue. Maybe by amending that over the years and as corcitura evolve, they have a built up immunity to the salts through valid roleplay. That would force the players entirely to go a different avenue and also achieve what you're looking for.

If it must I would find this a good compromise, but I think any mechanic that allows for someone to instantaneously find out a character is dark with extremely minimal rp is a bad mechanic that should not exist. If a mechanic at all allows for an easy way for people to skirt meta rules it is a bad mechanic and I would bet money there is a better way to tackle whatever ever issue that bad mechanic was trying to handle.

 

As far as recent events for corcs go it is to my knowledge that most were exposed prior to be salt tested or salt testing was not needed due to quality of the evidence.This amendment was mainly inspired by conversations I've had with others who were struggling with hunters using the most vague of rumors and suspicions to try to hunt them. Many corc players are keenly aware of how any level of suspicion can result in a salt test and how from that point on they are kinda fucked unless they can take far more actions in rp to disguise themselves than the hunters did in hunting them. Quite a few corcs have or are currently handling rp like that.

[Borin 5259]

31 minutes ago, __WaterFox__ said:

Many corc players are keenly aware of how any level of suspicion can result in a salt test and how from that point on they are kinda fucked unless they can take far more actions in rp to disguise themselves than the hunters did in hunting them. Quite a few corcs have or are currently handling rp like that.

Good. This is how they should have to rp. To happy GOD fearing man corcs and other spooks are the enemy, and as in real life sort of witch trial stuff, there are times when random/mass testing happens, and if theres any suspicion you can and will be investigated and ganked.

 

My point is, those playing these creatures SHOULD be forced to be careful and cover their tracks, and if somewhere does practice mass testing or is particularly suspicious, namely my sort of human canonist community where the church has the power and will to run about testing people OR the orcs I believe (?), they should rlly just stay away instead of throwing themselves into danger if they rlly dont wanna be caught.

[__WaterFox__ 631]

5 minutes ago, Borin said:

Good. This is how they should have to rp. To happy GOD fearing man corcs and other spooks are the enemy, and as in real life sort of witch trial stuff, there are times when random/mass testing happens, and if theres any suspicion you can and will be investigated and ganked.

 

My point is, those playing these creatures SHOULD be forced to be careful and cover their tracks, and if somewhere does practice mass testing or is particularly suspicious, namely my sort of human canonist community where the church has the power and will to run about testing people OR the orcs I believe (?), they should rlly just stay away instead of throwing themselves into danger if they rlly dont wanna be caught.

Hard to cover your tracks when any little thing could reasonably lead to salt testing. Salt tests are a cop out.

[lemonke 1876]

This is fair. I honestly always hated the test salt thingy, for while it's rather cool and makes sense theme-wise; people abuse it to mess with others and continue their needless witchhunt without any huge narratice behind it, or people who salt test anyone within their gate process, which limites the place where x corc may go. Therefore, killing roleplay in general as it would offer no interaction or no good-faith roleplay to anyone.

 

If it was me, i'd completely remove the salt part and add another "hint" that's less prominent and requires more work to avoid the random dude coming into your direction asking for a test; it could always be something linked to the salt theme as a whole though, get creative! We have sadly people who also metagames these procedures or says rply that aurum doesn't work anymore. So, in my opinion, it needs a huge overhaul.

 

 

Jade said it better than me tho, what ahe said and her ideas aren't bad! I would suggest to take inspiration to em.

[Borin 5259]

35 minutes ago, __WaterFox__ said:

Hard to cover your tracks when any little thing could reasonably lead to salt testing. Salt tests are a cop out.

As previously stated your suggestion is from a decent, well meaning place but it simply isn't a good alternative.

'Yes our blood is weak to salt, see, but because its too easy for you to cut us with a normal blade and apply salt to the blood from said cut as is the most efficient way to do so, our blood is only weak to salt if that salt has been encrusted onto a blade and if said blade comes into contact with a wound leaking plenty of blood, making it impossible for you to reasonably test anyone at all without great illogical inconvenience and maiming'

 

Yes any little thing could lead to salt testing if you go to some place where being a possible spook is an affront to GOD and one of the worst things you could do, let alone being people who go about murdering - contrary to what Lemonke said, I dont think mass testing in Canonist communities in particular where the Church has especially strong presences are needless or strange at all. You'd do the same in a priest's position if you were worried about the seemingly endless supply of dark creatures whose sole act in your land is to kill good Canonist folk, after all this time you wouldnt just think 'well we got one, thats it we can rest easy now' because they keep a-coming. If the neverending tide of spooks besieging ur canonist flock isnt enough of a narrative to crack down and try to as efficiently root them out as possible, idk what is... ur parents being killed by spooks when u were a child and being raised by a local warrior to kill them to avenge your family, a spin on the old X raided my village backstory perhaps?

 

This partly ties into my view that, well, through no fault of their own rlly, its not rlly a surprise anymore. At this point irp mosy ppl would prolly respond to a corcitura or whoever like 'really? another one?'. Its been dealt with so much and over and over it shouldnt be 'wrong' or 'in bad faith' to have adapted to efficiently deal with something perceived as a threat and has been a constant threat for irp hundreds and hundreds of years.

[DISCOLIQUID 1963]

7 hours ago, Borin said:

"Good. This is how they should have to rp." [I.E., NOT IN MY OOC COMMUNITY!] 

 

Hi, it doesn't matter how careful you are, people metagame & having ''some'' extremely loose RP reasoning such as: "We LARP Christian Nationalists" in order to nearly always overcome the barrier of generating enjoyable RP for your victims (read, the players you are permanently ousting from their own community) doesn't exonerate the poor attitude most players have around "catching spooks".

 

Creature RP has a place on the server & it is written to allow fantasy exploration of common villainous tropes. The glaring issue in power dynamic is a lack of group OOC planning on the part of MA, FA, and CA holders, as is the opposite case with human nations - they are often entirely driven through discord.

 

If Creatures could get together en-masse through national discord servers & burn you at the stake while also ejecting you from the entirety of the community, I am sure they would. It would probably be a better story than another player who just wants to LARP dracula being forcibly ejected from an RP group because a guard was told in discord voice-chat, "Salt them, salt them!"

 

It seems your OOC attitude is leaking quite a lot into IRP, or vice versa, though it can be hard to tell with these gymnastics. These characters often have quite a lot to provide in terms of RP other than simply hanging around waiting to die. It is exactly this no good faith attitude wherein other players are perceived as your "enemy" for holding an MA that drives the constant update of lore to evade asinine & overly memed "Spook-Testing". 

 

There is a mindset of pure, flawless character logic. Most humans abide by it. This means if I emote ANYTHING about being creepy AT ALL, the salt's coming out. No wiggle room for tropes, themes, collaborative writing, or investigation RP. Why would they need it? Why would they need to think? They have nothing to lose by just salting every single person they see. 

 

Much the same as other "random" policies in the real world that claim to be fair & unbiased, people do not "randomly" start salt-testing unless they are quite confident OOC they will find who they are looking for. I have even seen human players declare "Salt test, salt test!" and then take someone LOGGING OFF as a reason to find them later, because they "clearly escaped the salt tests!" Funnily enough, they were a vampire. 

 

This is bad game design, simple as. 

 

As an addendum, the solution to this problem is simple!

Create alchemical salt that fizzles in everyone's blood. Go into the human capital, salt test their popes & such with it, and when they don't burn these people alive, we'll all know what the real issue here is. 

 

Addendum 2: Took me all of five minutes.

 

[Luxury 603]

The existence of perfect disguises necessitates a failsafe form of discovery. I've never quite been a fan of the mechanic, yet I understand its function.

 

Even the disguises that seem to have forms of hints or clues are regularly mitigated and downplayed so as to not be a valid form of identification. And when things get hot, you change a skin. 

 

The fair detective roleplay that is being called for is exceedingly hard to do correctly, I find, unless you’re a veteran roleplayer.

[__WaterFox__ 631]

Just now, Luxury said:

The existence of perfect disguises necessitates a failsafe form of discovery. I've never quite been a fan of the mechanic, yet I understand its function.

 

Even the disguises that seem to have forms of hints or clues are regularly mitigated and downplayed so as to not be a valid form of identification. And when things get hot, you change a skin. 

 

The fair detective roleplay that is being called for is exceedingly hard to do correctly, I find, unless you’re a veteran roleplayer.

Corcs don't have disguises. The only way they can alter themselves is by making themselves obviously vampiric, which was a way a corc was caught. That asides corcs have no way to keep the person they feed off from speaking, so either they risk constantly crp'ing to feed or they do their damnedest to appease the person they feed off of. Quite a few corcs have been caught because of that.

 

As for detective work being made harder, that's just good. I was a cleric during the time they altered holy magics to keep people from being locked out of cities or instantly revealed so I know exactly how these types of changes go. At the time I was pissed because of how much harder it was to hunt down dark spawn, but it's not like it changed the ability to defend against or kill dark spawn. What it did do was yield to much more interesting roleplay where my cleric would use alchemy to disguise herself and enter places believed to be dark spawn strongholds or go out into the world to make connections who would give her information. In other words the removal of the meta free card made me rp more and gave more rp to other people.