[✗] [Amendment] Corcitoră Weaknesses + Feeding

[The King Of The Moon 7016]

Old [Weaknesses]:

Spoiler

Salt (in pure granular form or at most diluted as saltwater; not simple sand or salted foods) will will boil the blood of corcituri, 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 corcituri for up to a narrative hour. Weapons treated with salt will leave fizzling wounds on corcituri 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 Corcitori, having no impact on their bare skin. 

New [Weaknesses]:

Spoiler

Salination whilst in the first or higher stages of bloodthirst (in accordance with Feeding and Age) seawater and artificial saltwater (of 3% concentration or higher) will scold corcitori skin in the same manner boiling water would a descendant. In this state pure salt of a handful or greater also behaves as hot coals to corcitori (anything less than a handful could be ; not only is it painful to the touch, but [3] emotes of sustained contact would begin to melt through skin, thereafter causing blood to bubble agonizingly as the salt is dissolved into it. Though never completely lethal, if salt reaches the bloodstream a corcitoră becomes encumbered by pain for 2 emotes to follow, unable to sprint or maintain a magical connection.

 

Salt or saltwater must be represented by named RP items and consumed on use, with the exception of obvious environmental salination e.g. whilst swimming in the sea). If a character does not possess a mechanical item explicitly described as salt or saltwater prior to the roleplay, it cannot be deployed against a corcitoră in this manner. In the spirit of good faith, “test kits” intended to minimize inventory slots whilst encompassing multiple items and materials would also be insufficient. Sand, salt of less than a full handful as well as seawater less than a bucket will cause discomfort to the corcitoră but not enough to harm them or trigger signs of irritation. In this sense salted or saltwater treated items would also be insufficient.

New [Redlines]:

Spoiler

-Corcitori MUST document and date their feedings in order to reap the benefits from them. In this regard a corcitoră who cannot provide evidence to the ST on request that they have sufficiently fed within the criteria set by the Feeding as well as Age sections will be subject to the downsides of their Salination weakness as well as Feeding frenzies as described above.  

-Feeding cannot take place offscreen or with NPCs, and must be emoted on the server between player or ST Event characters.

Purpose:

The reasons for this submission need no introduction, though may of them can be found here:

In brief, when corcitori were written by myself in 2021, the salt weakness at that time was intended to parallel the saltwater weakness of the no longer playable Siliti CA (though later ST edited the CA to match the Feat weakness). This weakness was never meant as a "test" for either variant.

It was from its inception designed as a weapon for vampire hunting characters to use against corcitori, the idea for Siliti initially being that saltwater would be used to douse blades, arrows and bolts in place of holywater in broader pop culture; its purpose was always meant as a combat boon against these creatures.

The removal of Siliti notwithstanding, it is clear now 3.5 years on that the player culture which built around this weakness is far from the intended purpose. Those of you that remember the state of dark / holy magic interactions pre 2019 will recall the good reasons why "spook testing" became a banned spell criteria for loregames rewrites.
It is for this reason there are no other sure-fire (some magics and CAs have hints but none are explicit reveals) ways to 'test' any current dark magic or creature, with the sole exception of Sigismund's Candles (an alchemic product that requires ST signage) on Mystics and their affiliated CAs, and now salt in the Corcitoră Feat. And so now with loregames as a distant memory we are seeing the same issues return.

The reality is that no matter how much the term "good faith" is thrown around, and how sincerely certain people hold to it, there will always be those that act in bad faith. Having a foolproof, costless way of being 100% certain of someone's underlying magic or creature type has proven time and again an avenue for bad faith roleplay.

In the linked thread we can see people discussing examples of this, though here's one from today where I witnessed every character being let into a city was being tested, in some cases with multiple people in the same emote:


At the same time last week that @Morigung-oog's thread was up and commenters were arguing 'only obvious people get tested', I had the pleasure of witnessing this RP:


And of course I can hearken back to earlier experiences in the past weeks and months of 'salted aurum covid swabs' and "test kit" items which contained 3 or 4 different materials and objects aimed at being a catch-all for every character the user encounters and OOCly understands to play creatures:


This is nothing new, but it shouldn't be tolerated either. With the corcitori lore in its current state, there's not really any way to tackle this kind of roleplay. It's technically valid to do most of the time, and it makes total in-character sense to do as it is known in-character to work 100% of the time. No-one is disincentivised from behaving this way and as a result playing something like a corcitoră - a feat with no combative benefits - becomes incredibly stale, incredibly quickly.

With the lore as it stands if someone OOCly knows another character to be a corcitoră, they can very easily come up with an IC excuse to test that character knowing it will always succeed. Regardless of if your character 'only tests people that look edgy', the next guy can and therefore will test whoever they want, whenever they want, and refusal of a stranger's request to stab you and rub salt into your open wound is always inexplicably met with a guilty verdict, and metagaming is therefore easily excused.

So what this amendment proposes is not only to revitalise the combative designs of this weakness against corcitori, but also offer a modicum of ambiguity as well as a bare minimum responsibility to the RP at hand from both the tester and testee, in an attempt to challenge the current broken dynamic; A chance for tests to fail, whilst incentivising corcitori to take more responsibility for their feeding mechanic. The end intent here is for more feedings and thus more vampire interactions to occur, making them a noticeable - untamed - threat not only in public vampire attacks but their ability to infiltrate and coexist with other groups without immediately getting trapped in a gatehouse, discovered and executed.

 

This incredibly high risk, low reward dark art was designed to be accessible and widespread, and to create roleplay. The way in which my original writing has been interpreted has enabled anti-RP and frankly lazy behaviours. I sincerely hope this amendment is able to remedy that. 

[Werew0lf 24181]

Where's the 'werewolf insta kill siliti' weakness perchance? 

[Xarkly 17299]

Better & more balanced salt amendment, +1

 

I think mandating a requirement to keep a document of feeding is kinda op behaviour though, staff can just omni it as they would any other powergaming issue.

[PrimnyaQuorum 4003]

yea I think that'd do it +1

 

At the very least - forcing a minimum standard on corcs and testers in regards to testing feels like it hits the main issue of the last amendment attempt. A corc has to put in effort to avoid testing, and to avoid a weakness - testers have to meet a (realistically, very low) standard, but it pays off if the corc isnt keeping their feeding topped off.

 

I imagine every major city is already brainstorming how to get pass this, but at least its better then *cuts, salts, checks for brand RP. 

[Aehkaj 1244]

rid the world of boring gate rp

[Isvinity 729]

+1 from a long time vamp RPer, really hope to see this implemented to both breathe some seriousness back into Corcitoră as well as deter bad-faith parties on both sides.

[Helmet 1454]

i love the idea of dunking people in the high seas to see if they melt or not in the middle of a trial/science experiment
+1

[NightcastorKitty 2780]

I'm going to point something out here thats been on my mind when reading all the issues people are having with 'testing' in general. Some of the stuff that has happened and the examples provided, even with a really common weakness. Why are these allowed to be used and valid for roleplay? That multiple testing in one emote example right there, how is this allowed by moderation? At what point is it considered 'valid' cause I will state now. While this is an interesting new attempt at the weakness of salt, I don't see this changing much unless there is some standards of roleplay quality set in place to prevent bullshittery from happening. Cause I stand with people testing as I've been on that side of dealing with constant darkspawn doing their evil things, but I also stand on the darkspawn side of this bullshit testing RP going on even when they have done NOTHING to even show a hint of 'man this is a bad guy'. And no matter what lore redlines we put in place, we can't prevent what is 'allowed' by general standards of 'roleplay' and its jarring. 

[The King Of The Moon 7016]

1 hour ago, NightcastorKitty said:

but I also stand on the darkspawn side of this bullshit testing RP going on even when they have done NOTHING to even show a hint of 'man this is a bad guy'

If this is your opinion then surely testing becomes inexcusable? You can't have your cake and eat it; if you can test someone, you can metagame them.

Yes, you can argue bad RP should be policed more, though you yourself are on the team that would be doing that sort of policing. Why not be the change you want to see alongside this piece?
The problem is, I have also seen members of the ST do this sort of RP. I have seen Moderators do this.

There can be variation in quality, of course, but a foolproof test (as current lore permits and this lore would remove) will always result in problem behaviour. Staff are not omnipotent. Players are not perfect.

Of course metagaming should be disallowed, but stating this as the obvious isn't really a solution to that problem. Inevitably there are too many arguments and grey areas for this to be policed correctly; a character can always have a reason to be suspicious. 'This guy is a stranger' 'This guy looks edgy' 'This guy has bags under his eyes' 'My character doesn't trust this guy' 'My character is paranoid' 'The nation this guy is from had a vampire once so my character assumes everyone from there is one' etc etc. 
Beyond all of which, so long as a fool proof test system exists, there is no IC reason not to routinely test every person you encounter if you are in the position to do so (e.g. manning a gate). 

 

1 hour ago, NightcastorKitty said:

And no matter what lore redlines we put in place, we can't prevent what is 'allowed' by general standards of 'roleplay' and its jarring. 

Which is why I am making this change, because it takes away the root of the problem; the ability for people to do this in the first place with 100% certainty, whilst maintaining the weakness with the caveat corcitori should be more responsible for carrying out and cataloguing their main and only caveat: drinking blood. 
 

[NightcastorKitty 2780]

1 hour ago, The King Of The Moon said:

you can argue bad RP should be policed more, though you yourself are on the team that would be doing that sort of policing. Why not be the change you want to see alongside this piece?

We don't and have never monitored gate RP or really testing. I've only seen maybe one situation since I've returned from two years ago. And it was sort recent where we question someone metagaming a Naz player and their branding. But other than that, I haven't seen reports on our end dealing with that. 

 

Thus why it's frustrating. 

[The King Of The Moon 7016]

29 minutes ago, NightcastorKitty said:

But other than that, I haven't seen reports on our end dealing with that. 

Because as it stands in lore there isn't a reason to report it, and even if there was that report wouldn't go anywhere for the aforementioned reasons:

 

2 hours ago, The King Of The Moon said:

character can always have a reason to be suspicious. 'This guy is a stranger' 'This guy looks edgy' 'This guy has bags under his eyes' 'My character doesn't trust this guy' 'My character is paranoid' 'The nation this guy is from had a vampire once so my character assumes everyone from there is one' etc etc. 
Beyond all of which, so long as a fool proof test system exists, there is no IC reason not to routinely test every person you encounter if you are in the position to do so (e.g. manning a gate). 

Simply put it can't be fixed by tighter monitoring, because there's nothing to monitor outside of what the lore as is currently permits. 
It's a lore-based issue which is why I'm proposing a lore-based solution.

[NightcastorKitty 2780]

1 minute ago, The King Of The Moon said:

t's a lore-based issue which is why I'm proposing a lore-based solution.

I'm definitely not against this attempt. My main comment was more towards the purpose area provide and the huge amount of examples this topic in general has been going on about. I think there are multiple layers to this problem. But this amendment could help alittle at least with curving something. 

[Islamadon 9158]

This lore has been denied.

I emphasize that is NOT a Manager Veto by any means. When plopped in our Amendment chat, we discussed this amendment and the general feeling among the LT is that Corcitura should be testable in ANY state, which this proposal fundamentally wanted to change. While we felt Salt Water etc. was a cool mechanic, the consensus was that we did not want to trade it for active test potential. There are Vampire writes potentially under review [soonish?] so maybe testing can be made harder there; as for now, the LT just do not want to set a precedent if that makes any sense.