Zonty

The tranquil glade welcomed him. Leisure sun blissfully gawked from its aureate throne in unstained firmaments. Amidst the meadows he had come across, a copse of willowy woods crooned over the untreaden earth, unmooring quiet groans to the whiffle of blithe winds that danced about. He found asylum beneath the canopy of those lithe trees. Not because he loathed the sun, but simply because shade was better when the yellow eye was at its summit in the summer. His hulking silhouette leant against a sole great bough that loomed obtruded by its epigones. A scant cloak of crude make pressed against the bark. A hoary shawl skinned off some beast he had wrangled down in the time of his wandering. Its hide lay now, with some nodules along its slicked surface, and a pair of ivory tusks crowning the triumphant’s brow. Wandering. The thought echoed him. It was like this once-plain notion turned inscrutable. The wind sighed, and a whirligig of leaves curled around him. It ineluctably caught his gaze and distracted his thought; and then it settled, it took some moments to return from bunk to sense. His red, refined muscle tensed, digits reverently coiling about an instrument in his grip. This thing had grafted unto his psyche. He was no aficionado in the world of musicians, nor was he the best raconteur. But this life of wayward bard, of carefree traveler that skulked through arboreal expanses and vast leas have supplanted what he once was in entirety. Maybe it was consternation. A fear of responsibility, should he ever strive for something grandiose. He was content, first, with his decision. Nought was of worry; he ambled whither he whimmed, espoused his own, crude and unembellished thoughts. A syncresis of rumours and not quite fathomed shards of the more codified principles. But before long something stirred in the deepest bowels of his consciousness. A rakish seed of contempt, which tangled his mind with its protuberances further with each month. Now it loomed above him like a great mountain. His glance trailed his own arms, his red physiognomy, whose meaning had retreated into some long-forfeited recess of his memory. His ivory promontories that jagged from his jaws shivered. Who was he? He thought. Before he abandoned any vestige of culture, before he forsook resemblance to his or any other people. What was it that defined him? Those thought gabbled into a din of drivel, too dissonant and garbled to glean candid thesis in this amuck stampede of emotions. His own voice catcalled him. Dubbed him weak. Daubed shame across his obscene choices. He could only barely endure this self-objuragation, and so he hauled himself out of this deep castigation. His gaze latched onto some sussuring shrub. Driven by this already half-exhumed backbone to make hard decisions, he thought to himself, of the things he extolled. Valiancy? Intellect? Propensity to do the better? His squalid nails scratched across an itching patch of skin. Then, his eyes avert back to the laund. Some louche critters cavorted in the tall grass. Perhaps, it is time I not only repent for my choices, but geed myself to amend where I erred. Some auspicious thought finally dawned his stultified mind. The hesitance bewearied him. Beyond an acceptable measure. So he pulled himself from this rickety lounge, an interlude between his forest-shambling. His thoughts, no longer constrained to a shoal of secular constraints. He sought more. Yearned more. And this enrichment he set out to find, across a voluminous remnants of the slowly crumbing realms.

The title says it all. It's not in any way a major issue, but it is still a hassle when you NEED to have a stonecutter stown somewhere in your vicinity when you want to make just some minor, nifty alterations. I feel like this has no purpose and just limits the creative ability. So. Here is my epic drawing that will solve everything.

🎶🎶🎶 !!! This is NOT a prophecy, and is NOT known to most characters save for a few specific people that could feasibly glean this (You know who you are) It is mostly just a display of inner struggle Beneath a hushed canopy of mutilated stone, within a long-abandoned sanctuary where seldom any soul dared tread, a shadow stirred. Skulking through the gloom, passing along the rickety furniture that sagged beneath the weight of stupendous years it shouldered. Long-snuffed or eviscerated candles lounged in nooks and crevices, hiding away from any eye not keen enough, or not strong enough to penetrate the shade that clung to this sanctum. But, with each silent step of the sole creature that strode along the forlorn halls in utter defiance of its forsaken fate, it narrowed the distance to an untold mark, which only its twisted mind held cradled. Eventually, a vast expanse opened a distance ahead, peeling an insidious gleam from a yawning fissure in ancient stone. Here, pale light was rife. A strange agglomeration of sin, bound to Mundus and made manifest — a gleeful glint of primordial malice. Yet — the gait of a strange lurker never ceased, but borne it further. Closer with every breath drawn. With every beat of heart reverberated. The frame hid away from the unbenign glare of the sinister radiance that writhed about under a swathe of onyx darkness, scurrying on without pause. Finally, it encroached upon a jagged crack that gashed in floor like a calcified titan’s maw with jaws agape with spleen. Even here — even on the very fringe of this unmeasured fall where shadows dwelt at bottom, the figure evinced no hesitancy. No thought of safety or preservation. With a sharp slant, its form careened, plummeting into the unbeknownst depths. By and by, and its fall faltered. Forces unseen and incomprehensible tugged at its carcass and sloughed its velocity, softly planting the visitor aground. There — a morbid squelch rasped from the floor. A splayed carnage, of fresh or long eviscerated bodies — some, gnawed on and stripped of any nourishing substance — mourned beneath the figure’s steps. Its glance peeled hither and thither, scattering across this pillaged butchery. Ivy and some other meagre verdancy clung to this afar asylum, so veritably away from any sane mortal. Even here, nature curdled and curled with its serene relentlessness. Sedate. But never yielding. There was something achingly enticing about this unhallowed space, wreathed in the stench of death and things yet worse. Perhaps not of any consolation to the ilk that wallowed in normalcy, but of great solace to the pressing figure that had come here. It was a memory. A soothing touch of long foregone ages. Cruel, perhaps. Agonizing — surely. But valuable. Meaningful. There were many an impetus that stoked this guest’s steps, but among them crooned a trivial facility. A simple pain. A cause that borne its wielder along both virtues and vices. The figure drooped, shoulders sinking beneath the blanket of a whorling shadow. Slowly, the frame sunk into the gore, ichor weeping from the purulent amalgamations. Arms came to cradle the figure’s curled knees, and its shrouded head slumped downward. A heavy sentiment had clogged its throat. The thoughts and worries hardly capable of being put to words of any tongue. Its grip cinched, and silence stretched across the desolate bowels. Perhaps it were only minutes that had gone by. Perhaps hours or even days. It was too difficult to assess in the shelter unmoored from time. But with every beat of the heart, the weight only bore down weightier upon those harried shoulders. With every passing moment, the bile and blight only bulked at its sternum. Until finally — the hardship was too heavy a toll to endure silently. The figure reeled, its maw cast wide agape, and a wailing cry tore from its throat, reverberating across stones and plants, skulking through the halls and whispering at book-laden shelves. The carnage beneath quivered and flailed with new-wrought vigour, hissing and squealing under an enthroned frame. Shadows capered and pranced, swirling in images too twisted to have any sliver of revelation gleaned in their curves. But along with the penumbra that cavorted across ceiling and floors, something yet deeper unspooled from the pained, disconsolate shriek. An onyx haze that spun through the slouched cavern and smothered any semblance of light that still clung to its crevices. The haggard, rasping holler prevailed through a great measure of time, an ailing screech from which even the never-breathing stones almost bent away, tapped by this depthless despair even in their soulless marrows. But it was not the sound of eternity. Time bewearied the bellow — or perhaps merely mended the misery in which the figure had been embroiled. The sound faltered and crumbled away. And when soonafter the darkness dispersed from the unbeknownst cavity, none remained there. As if the figure had been only an echo. A lash of timeless spirit that still remembered something about those deserted halls. The answer was ready.

Marooned in long-forgotten tomb, a lone figure stirs from dust-laden slumber. The air is thick with weight of ages, stale and unmoving — until the walls start trembling, clawed by forces none could see. Cracks spiderweb across the stone, and from the darkness rings a cry — not scream, but a mourning breath scraped raw across eternity. It echoes like a curse, a memory half-buried: "You were never meant to fall before I did..."

🎵🎵🎵 [The following is available to those able to witness Prophecies] You blink, but your eyes are already closed. In that folded blackness, your thoughts unravel like silk threads dipped in ilk. No sound. No shape. Just a low thrum of blood humming in your skull like distant thunder. The sleep does not take you. It beckons. Slow and insistent. A tide dragging you to unseen coasts. You surrender. You sink. The dark around you writhes with unborn images. Half-formed memories, scraps of days that never happened, press in. You tread through dappled haze. Half - shadow, half - dazzling gloams of marble pavement: stonework laid in streets of city clandestine behind that shroud of obscurity. Your mind whispers. This is not a dream. But there is no answer. Only clink of metal — your feet against the road. Then — a breath behind you. Ephemeral. Like a sigh of a soft wind. You try to shift. To break free.. But your limbs are caught in invisible tension. Tethered. The sensation of your body is heavy and too large, as if inflated with wet sand. You feel bloated with dread. Inside your mouth is the tang of copper. You cough. Something coils around your neck. Cold like grave. Indomitable like death. You scream but the voice is caught and crushes in stranglehold. The end encroaches. The distant flashes of light plunging into dimness. But your waking is denied. The smothering dream holds you cinched in its interminable cradle. You cough. The abyss cleaves with semblance of clarity. Shapes congeal. Sound breathes into vacuum. Slicken walls, a dank cavern. In front — a black basin. You lean closer. You gaze deep within: and your mind reels. Nothing dwells in its bowels. Yet something should. It had to.. It was never supposed to be unfil— your thought is severed: something clogs within your throat. Thick. Viscous. A glutted, sickly substance, stinging iron taste against your tongue. You slump forward, clawing at your sternum. You gag and onyx bile surges to the chalice, while you crook and slouch like a hunchbacked penitent, sputtering more and more on end. Then, behind the bowl, She manifests. Not appears. Not arrives. Manifests — as though the shadows themselves were always her flesh, waiting only for your eyes to open wide enough to see. She rises not from the floor, nor descends from above, but simply is. All at once — still and silent, and yet unbearable in presence. A frame pallid and lithe, impossibly tall, impossibly still. Her limbs arc with uncanny grace, long as dying tree branches in winter’s hush. She is wreathed in no garment you recognize. Not silk, not leather, but a veil of ruthlessness made flesh, a shroud stitched from grief and judgment, each fold whispering names you haven’t heard since childhood, names you had buried deep in your marrow. She exudes no warmth. Her aura chills like a cellar flood. The air around her crystallizes with each shallow breath you take, and your teeth chatter not from cold but from the sheer knowing that she sees you. Her gaze meets yours — not from eyes, but from twin hollows burning with a pale and patient malice. That stare digs into you like sharp nails, curving beneath your skin, dragging down and across with no resistance. It peels your illusion open — strips the outer mask, rends the soft veil of flesh, splits sinew and ego alike. She gleans. Past tendon, past memory, past even fear — she peers through the very soul-thread that tethers you to form. And there, she finds you: unmoored, raw, unmasked. You see it then, too: yourself — within her grasp. The world shifts again, slewing sideways like a ship tossed by unseen seas. The ceiling peels open and a swathe of stygian pervades. In a heartbeat, the floor beneath you is admonished. You fall — but not down. Sideways. Inward. Around — a spiral of whispers too garbled to decipher. You tumble into a cathedral made of bone and sinew, its arches breathing, its pews filled with masks carved from faces. Red rain falls from vaulting ceilings, and a bell tolls. But not from the above; but below. Then the floor cracks. You plunge. With sickening thwack, your body lands in mound of gore and viscera — a glistening heap of butchered anatomy, still warm and weeping. The noise ripples, reverberating through the suffocating chamber you have desecrated with your presence. The stench is overwhelming and unbearable. Hot, sweet rot mingled with bile and iron clings to your throat like a wet rag. Your limbs quail, struggling against soft carnage splayed beneath you. But then — hiss and snarl, all around you. The chamber groans with them. Clear and vivid. And you raise your eyes. Fetid people, big and small but wrong, with faces warped into malignant aberrations. Their mouths gape wide, with fangs long and profane. From their gnarled hands jut talons like scythes. They lurch at you, but you manage only to look up — and there, high above in the bleeding ceiling, through jagged crack, you see a constellation. Green and lurid. Not the forests, not the life; but sin. A hue soaked in poison, envy, and an invitation. It pulses like a wound in the firmament, shapes shifting within it like limbs behind frosted glass. It sees you. It knows. The swarm obtrudes you, and finally — you wake. [The leering constellation]

[Birds beyond normalcy, warped afar from their once cherished serenity, fluttered through realms, trilling insidious tunes. They borne parchments along, loosing them, whether unfurled or scrolled, for all to glean.] Infernal Arena “Ra’drakurz raht roknoth kuul ra’vaznan amol tul.” A gargantuan, many-pearled beast—its hide like burnished bronze strewn with opals—howled flame and fury into the blood-warm air. Smoke wreathed its hulking limbs as it thundered across the broken stones, rending and reaving with weapons too massive for mortal hands. Each blow cracked the earth, each roar a tempest of wrath given voice. Opposite him moved a figure pale of gaze and quiet of soul—a demon cloaked in ash and ember. He danced, not fought, weaving between ruinous blows with an elegance born of death. His motions were fluid as drifting smoke, untouched by the crimson cyclone that raged before him. Not once did his single, ashen blade rise to strike, nor his countenance shift beneath the veil of soot. He waited. Patient. Poised. Until, at last, the moment balanced—perfect and terrible. Then came the strike. Silent as falling dusk, swift as the shadow between heartbeats. Steel kissed flesh, and the giant's fury faltered. The beast fell, its roars silenced in a final plume of fire. And now, only one remained. =+= Thus is the fate of all who tread the soil of Mundus: to rise by strength or perish by weakness. To stand unshaken amid the storm, or to falter and be swallowed by the dust. The craven veil their eyes from this unflinching truth, weaving for themselves a shroud of lies and broken vows, clinging to illusions like children to fading dreams. But you—if you would cast off the chains of their feeble sanctuary, if you would remain untouched by their petty cowardice and empty boasts—then seek me. Through stone and storm, through wind-swept peaks and sunless chasms, find me. Call me forth with steel in your grip and resolve in your heart, and meet me in the sacred clash of duel. Should you prevail—not by luck, but by the clarity of will and the edge of your soul—I shall lead you beyond the veil, to a place hidden from the eyes of the many. Cloaked in secrecy, carved in silence. There, the true trials await. Battles not for glory, but for truth. There, you will be tested—not only in strength, but in spirit. And there, the fight shall bloom. [Beneath, at the very verge of a parchment, seen only by vigilant eyes, more words splay: “Beneath Silasia, where water meets murk, glean a chasm in the pond; and delve below stone crust.”]

https://youtu.be/nwuW98yLsgY?si=a5_cp26j32K7xnjT

Mysticism is weak ass save for wights But ok apparently i was confused on how lifeforce and ectoplasm are integrated with the soul. So this amendment should be nulled

While reading through mysticism, under a spell Walling I stumbled on a redline that stated Malflame instantly destroys the waged barrier on account of malflame's soul-burning properties. I don't see any sense behind this as Ectoplasm (of which the barrier is made) is NOT in any terms a soul. It's just a mixture of mana and lifeforce. The inflated weakness to malflame of mystics themselves in the lore has always been rooted in a simple fact that any mystic stores more than a single soul. Thus, when malflame starts searing them, the agony is multiplied due to the assault of multiple souls simultaneously. I've hastily gone through ectoplasm - related lore-pieces and found no other spot where this correction needs be applied, though I could certainly miss something. Do let me know if I did and I'll tack it onto the amendment. The amendment itself: - Mysticism -> Liturgies -> Walling -> Redlines Old: New:

Harken my call, O’ mortal men of Aevos. Many an age has passed Since my awakening. Much has gone by. But lethargy grips me. I am bewearied; I yearn for solace; For rest. But none could grant it. None achieved my peril. So I ask of you, The shrewdest of your ilk. Grant me my death. Verily, I crave it. - Galolim

I bow

By a mistake of fate, or twisted humour, a man had been unravelled to Mundus in an unbelonging time, an unbelonging place. A soft mind, cradled in composure and affection, by a virulent will of forces beyond control, had been clad in a great mass of muscle, ugly lineaments and shallow brain. An urukim with misplaced soul, and misshaped composition; bereft of shrewdness for which the consciousness yearned. Many a time ago, he’d iron his will time and time again, and he’d strive to battle the cravings with which his body rankled and encumbered him. A painful clash of inner monstrosities. He tried to find solace in spirits; but they bequeathed him naught but torment in enslavement. He sought peace in musics, but the lulling melodies became unbearable. The lilting sounds could not undo his predicament. They failed to soothe the mind that steeped with rage. More than a single year elapsed. Far more. But alas, with every winter passing, his malady grew. Its nexious web sprawled, and it rooted deep; and it festered until it occupied his consciousness entirely. He strayed and wondered, but upon a fateful day discovered a cohort of evil ilk. With them he assailed a city, and it was there that the ever clandestine ire stirred too much; he was consumed, and he fought ravenously, unlike any time before. He fought without thoughts, he fought without reason. Without purpose. A valiant warrior confronted him; and Urukim was undone. His torment ended. A pitiful end, for a pitiful create. A pitiful fate.

Once, the sheer name of Astark summoned a turmoil. Once, it was a sheen of dread. A forlorn helplessness. Once, a twinge of hope. An alluring promise. Once, an acrid spite. A livid thought. A certain creature reminisced on times foregone. But now all of it was gone. In the end, their wishes coincided. Only methods were far apart. In the end, they both fought for a common cause, against a common enemy. Her mind was sodden with sorrow. A sadness of another fallen, condemned to suffering eternal. She mustered nor a boastful toast in her demise, nor a weeping lament. There was only silence.

Amusement frothes from someone's visage; "A battle."

In a dark cradle of night and soft beams of the moon, she sat atop an escarpment. Afar of busy realms, in the wilderness, she leered down unto a valley. Clad strangely: in unstained tourniquets and a violet cloak that flapped to the whimsical gales, she held one such a missive in her grasp. Her visage was obscured, and yet a shroud of silence was heavy upon her. Morose. "You lost a battle, but not dignity. You met your peril, but not thraldom. Nor servitude. Nor slavery." She lulled her own despondency. "Unclipped. Unchained. Unbridled." Her wrist flicked, and the parchment was loosed to the ire of winds that frivolously borne it away. "Rest. You have earned it.”

This thought has been itching my brain since just about the time I've learnt about the death-mechanics surrounding players in LOTC. We all know Monks, and I don't want to give any opinion on them. Some people enjoy the randomness of the world and would rather PK on the first death, whilst others might feel the story of their character incomplete and therefore would want to continue it unharmed by a random PvPer that ganked them when they were afking. However, there is another side to the coin of death on our server. There is a myriad of ways to outmatch death itself on LOTC, and become truly immortal in roleplay. This result is often a difficult thing to accomplish, and it might be a yield of a very lengthy rp-scheme. Maybe one that stretched for many months. Even then, this result has its tolls. Primarily, it is an enforced PK-clause that a player needs to accept. Usually it is explained as the player's character has dabbled in forbidden secrets, Monks no longer wish to restore them. But what are the boons? Here is the main point of this entire blob of text. What happens when a player who has acquired IRP immortality perishes in roleplay? Given that nothing prevents them from doing so, they are brought back to life again. But. They don't remember anything. Why?? I do understand the idea when it comes to Monks. Since they are currently more of a non-spoken order, it would be exponentially weird to have a character remember their death and all of the circumstances, given that they have no clue of how they were brought back to life. But for players that have undergone a HUGE quest to acquire their immortality in roleplay this seems like a majorly needless rule. I have many examples I can bring about, and I'll put a couple of them in a spoiler below. But for all those who don't wanna read them for one reason or the other - feel free to just comment on the post. I am genuinely curious to read what people think of the matter, and whether this concept should be altered or not. My current view, if this hasn't become clear yet, is that this ruling is CRINGE and should be altered. :3c Examples:

Hjelgi weaved through the halls built upon the labour of resilient dwarves after the missive had been published. Sorrow lay grimly upon her as she strode along the farthest, scarce crevices of the Undearground Realm. "Yu shoul' haff list'ned..." She lamented aimlessly; into naught. "Yet yu chose ignorance; clingin' t' teh sembalanceh o' powah yu so covet 'n yearn t' nevah lose." Words were soon lost beneath a heavy thought for a while, and many feet , if not leagues, were trodden in the chiseled caverns. " . . . . . . "Shame.."