Frostdrop1

Nice post. Honestly, kind of nice to have the revivals acknowledged somehow haha

Do not tangle with magic slots. This doesn't make sense in lore irregardless. Moreover, though "ordained heraldry"? You HAVE to do heraldry to get to ordained heraldry so what does that even mean - is it included? Is there really a point of locking out housemagic? What does this mean for characters before the write? It's, frankly, an unnecessary complication. Cursed Children are born with [4] Magic Slots, whereas [1] remaining slot is “locked” and may only be regained if dedicated to the following magics (except in the case of MArts or approved exceptions): ⛥ Naztherak. ⛥ Druidism. ⛥ Shamanism. ⛥ Ordained Heraldry. I think having blended colours on CC could get really complicated and weird. I think that should be struck from the piece. Like, what if two blended CC have a baby? Creating the "infernal soul" requires its own lore piece to be added to the souls part of the forums, probably. At current, souls just don't function this way and the CC curse is undefined and fits none of the changes to the souls the deities impose, because the soul is fundamentally unchanged but you can add a piece ig to make it so. This does lead to complications onto why not having the deeper connections with other demon elements like rokodra which is a can of worms. While not necessary, I do think the CC community should have been communicated with as others working on re-writes and various amendments before have done in the past. It was very polite and much appreciated because they didn't just assume what the wider playerbase would want. This was not the case this time. I don't dislike the other aspects since they act more like flavour and are optional traits to some degree.

A darkened claw skimmed the rim of a tumbler over and over and over again. Travel and isolation had become his means to wade through the scratching chaos of his mind. Glowing marks made themselves known, as did their sting, upon his clench of the glass. He sipped. Even so, he remained teetering on the edge - always teetering. He was ever-downing under the weight of the sturdy figments his mind had carefully jailed him in and the existential threat that pressed on his mind, ever-growing. Personable desire drove some flicker in him to try again, again. Just one more time, try again. And yet, he wasn't ready. Always was he too ready to dig his claws beneath his skin and tear it off, in hopes to peel away the nightmare with it. He chased every shred of evidence that he wasn't a monster and deserved to be loved, when all he could fixate on what the damage he did and how he didn't fit. What he wished would give him clarity, the inkling of grander, larger hope came with its own fog of enquiry and paining hurdles. Enormous things, that screamed at him to break the things he still loved. Because they were wrong. Because their meaning was imagined. His mind still warred to reconcile it all. The smallest things hit him so heavily, overwhelmed by everything as it was. So, he kept chasing the echo of happiness at the bottom of the glass, hoped his closest would forgive the transgression, prayed to bolster his conviction. Yet, the boy buried somewhere in him just grieved the father he lost, though he remembered nothing but a whisper of warm fuzz, and the mother he couldn't save and wished they would ease the dread of the path he had set himself. And he hoped his son - who he had not expected, who he had trained in the snow, and who he had laughed and cried with, who he has struggled relentlessly to piece a life together for, who had changed his life in all the best and worst ways, and for who he battled on and on to be the husk of a good father for - was a stronger person than he had proved to be.

- Inferi are a glaring issue. They are rubbish to roleplay. People get them, get bored and stop because it's pretty much impossible to develop them in any sense beyond like one mechanical upgrade. They need more freedom to be maintained and interesting to those who pick them up. - Boons & banes are too easy to remove (you can literally cut them off lol). This makes them not often worth investing in with non-naz players since the majority of the time you: x have cool interaction x hide something in it cuz ur a bad guy x they get rid of it oopsie This results in boons & banes being more used between naz rather than against outsiders, because they're actually going to keep the damn thing. - Cursing is not worth the irredeemable magic slot. The one amendment that was offered to make it worth existing got denied so idk. Make cursing more impactful and actually worth losing ur magic slot forever over it. - Lean more into deal-making. Naz is so cool as a deal-maker premise. Imo, it would benefit immensely from in-built ways to disguise or distort memory so you can't be so easily called out. You can't exactly be a cool deal-maker if you try to interact beyond your circle, do 1 deal and they rat you out immediately but you also don't have $100+ to toss at skins so you can do alchemical switch-ups. I mean shoot me or something but I don't think external payments to people with the skills to skin should be a necessary or fundamental part of playing anything on LOTC, but the nature of dark magics certainly makes such things almost necessary without just getting pinned endlessly. Naz is fundamentally a cool magic, with a cool premise and has the community to back itself up. They're more nit-picks than glaring issues, aside from the inferi. Also just like generally supporting dark magics so they aren't perpetual underdogs - all dark magics. It feels like dark magic is never a real threat on the server because frankly they're easy to beat into the ground. A lot of people just end up interacting within their own communities or with friends because that side of the server is more dependant on trust. And, frankly, it's better for it but it also means outsiders don't get to interact as much beyond the communities certain groups know they can trust.

Reinhard gave the missive a skim-read, a cursory glance barely worth his time and simply noted again that the Empire was full of uneducated degenerates, even after hundred of years to understand this stuff. In some sense, he had to hand it to them that it took exceptional talent to be so ignorant. But then it occured to him with a small frown that at least the Inquisition had a point the prior times. A real point, even for his own kin. It was so clear, he had to accept it because he knew it was true, even if it were for awful reasons. He gave it a second look and simply blurted in his incredulity: "Are they getting dumber?"

"I assume you've heard the news?" It was not a letter, but a tongue. Reinhard turned his gaze, his thoughts whirring elsewhere, plans being made. Something was finally in motion. He had the means. He had the backing. And though he wouldn't wish to admit it to anyone, he had someone with the mentality for it. "Telemachus is dead." How inconvenient. Now, luck was never truly his mistress. Or, more accurately, Fate. The day just prior they were at odds. He was hounded again by the boy and was, in all frankness, at his wit's end. His life was in crumples. He couldn't possibly be sad that Telemachus died. In many ways, it was a relief. He was looking at a ghost - and he had to tread petty nonsense all over again. He just didn't need it. Time. Asahiko had been right that he needed time. He needed to get away - and yet this is what followed him? All the time. All the time. He was genial, as genial as he could be. He didn't stoop to insults. He didn't lie. He was left strictly trying to control his tone, and his body at some of the information he was being given. At the insults levelled. At the prying around him. Fight. Oh yes, fighting would resolve it. This years-long endeavour of the boy. Fighting would solve it. Not that he could trust his hand - if he started fighting, he knew he wouldn't have stopped. His body was wired to go as of late. It had already carried him too far once. The only faint relief he had was what defense another granted him, observing the way the discourse was between the two. It wasn't his fault things were so aggressive. It wasn't him doing that. All this time, he hadn't acted. He had held his hand, held his tongue. He held it, because they were allies. They were brothers. "What brothers and sisters?" Okay, they weren't brothers. His vision fuzzed. After all this time. Was that what they all thought? He couldn't voice that. He grabbed it. He boxed it. He boxed it alongside all the other boxes in his head. Still, he held he rage, his offense. He could do that, if he just closed the boxes tight. Everything he wished to say was silenced, as ever. Maybe he was his own worst enemy. Reinhard couldn't know. He was trying to do right by his allies, but he always seemed to choose wrong. He needed to speak with the correct people. The one who had dealt with them before. And still, they were paired. Forced to work together. He just didn't need it. Then, they talked. It wasn't the first time. He hadn't expected it to be the last time. Things were far from repaired, but they were amicable. At least, on the surface. Reinhard certainly hadn't forgotten everything Telemachus said, and everything Telemachus did. He hadn't forgotten what had happened in that room, nor what he had led his partner into. He hadn't forgotten the way people looked at him over what spilled from his mouth. Not the fear of it, the loss of it, the blood spilled over it. He hadn't forgotten that. --- By the time he was alone in his study, the devil was brooding. A book laid before him, no bigger than a pocketbook. He had many books, but this one was special. It was familiar. Taunting. Fingers curled and folded together to support his chin. Thinking. Contemplating. Telemachus might have been one of the few people he truly hated. And even then, he made what he could of it. Was he that much of an idiot? Had he not learned his lesson? What would he do the next time he met someone like Telly - just let them ruin his life again? Again? Again? The accusations levelled his way toyed in his mind, living rent-free. He didn't have a way to rid them. Of course he didn't. He couldn't remember. He couldn't defend himself. Pathetic, is what Telemachus left him feeling. And he took answers with him. He took perspective. He took all of his usefulness with him. All his Truth. Maybe that was the point, the effect of it. He wasn't wrong. Was he wrong? No, he wasn't wrong. It was the tale of his life. He sat straighter as a metallic taste crept upon his tongue. His incessant gnawing. Eyes slid down to black-slathered gloves. He shifted them under the desk, to wipe. Wipe. Wipe. It didn't move, that fixture of his mind's eye. When they raised they clasped around the edges of the book. His mind was like snow; buzzing like static. He could know. The warning rang in his ears. Don't open it. With a thud, he dropped it. He heaved breaths, raised his hand to fold fingers through his hair. He cursed to himself, quietly. When his wits even half-recovered, he murmured a slow prayer for Telemachus below his breath before he opted for a whiskey instead.

Reinhard snarled as he hovered over his desk, not so coincidentally in Lichtenwald. He squinted, before he wrenched the whole thing aside to crash to the floor. "Idiots!" He had nothing to say to plead the case. No good would come, that much he did know. There was everything to lose, and nothig to gain. He had begged and tried and made his best of the circumstances - and now it boiled. Never have stopped the wrath of Man, bound, Fated, to ever-turn The Wheel by their very nature.

Reinhard scoffed at the bottom-most plea. His claw ran over the parchment. Leaving indents along where they stretched. "Pathetic." Though his hand settled to his feathered cheek after, pudging it against his palm as his gaze cast off. And he sat, in wonderment, of what gave that man so much right to get on his knees and beg to be remembered well. What have him the right to say he built? What gave him the right to claim his shackles were unison? what gave him the right the claim he gave mercy. Piercing the parchment, claws scrunched to crumple the page. To each there was their own perspective. He knew. He understood. But jealousy was a bitter flame and all the devil could do to console his circumstances was to remind himself that the emperor was but a man. As blind as any man; as beholden to The Wheel as any man. Crumpled clawing merely turned into a weaker sigh.

Reinhard arched his brows of the missive, tilting a tumbler as his horned head tilted back. His gloves were stripped, settled aside to rest on his coffee table as the fire of the far-end of the room blazed, flickering shadows on the walls that swam in his vision. Marred hands clasped at the parchment, sable-clawed. One skin, one flesh; both ran with patterns that faintly glowed in pallid hues. At first it was merely a stilled reaction, before faintly fluffed feathered flared briefly - and an indignant snort was promptly stifled. Then, he just laughed. Up was his tumbler raised in great amusement as amber liquid sloshed over the rim. It was a low, warm, resonant laugh that ran until his lungs exhausted, fuelled largely by his drink. As the sound spluttered, running dry, he settled the glass with a quiet thunk. His purple-hued fleshed palm raised to cover his mouth, muffling the mumblings unto himself: "GOD, bless these witless hypocrites! World's a damn comedy."

Reinhard settled the missive to the arm of his seating. "Finally did something sensible. Et only took-" He squinted in though, before his shoulders raised and his head settled back, the time of The Empire's founding lost upon him. Piercing the decorated ceiling above, his gaze fixated to a stare - thoughts promptly cast elsewhere to other battles.

Reinhard tsk'd as he sat back in the clinic after. Perhaps, at another point, he would have been frustrated with such a show of pride from each man. Was it honour, to not yield - or simply reckless foolishness? Of course, he was certainly one to think such a thing. Him, a devil, in the same space as the Emperor. The Grand Butcher, and his piglets and their grand hypocrisy. How his princed dared to spake the illusion that he cared about the life of Man. The Empire of Man he could not touch. The one that would end his life in a blink. His gaze toyed over a cigarette between his fingers, turning it quietly. No ordinary cigarette, yet still mild - laced with green. A gift. Another duality. At least the patient lived. His hand coiled about the cigarette to stow it away.

It's a more flavourful cutting-down-of-tree. I agree. I think having seeing a corrupted tree ... its pretty logical to go to the druids. Them having a special 'killing' spell is fitting. It's just flavour but its nice flavour.

When the letter flitted to the devil, rapt briefly by it in his basement - his lab, where the door was locked and he was dead to the world - he couldn't help but grin. But chortle. Fangs gleamed with edged mockery as fingers fell deftly to the keys of a piano - a real piano, locked down below. From whence he got the tune, he no longer knew, but it didn't matter - it was melancholic as ominous as his hangs worked the keys without real effort. For he didn't work them at all, not truly. His state was one far from a sober, stable creature, with an empty bottle by his stool and curious remnant lines of golden dust on the counter, marked by flecks of else he had modified it with. His hands were guided by a malgnant force, a foolish sentimental gift he clutched in each day of his life. Of course, the last he truly knew of any communication between him and the orc had been that letter - buried, burned. He never was going to fulfill that promise. He never could express outwardly how much he hated the orc - and then himself. How much stronger he might feel if he could have done it - if he could simply have pressed his advantage and took the revenge that was rightfully his. But he never was one to do that. To bring harm. How much had he let happen, becuase he could strike when he should? Was he allowing it now? Of course he was - he knew so. Hands crashed discordant on the keys before he broke into a laugh terribly unfitting, so untamed in its tones that it was anything other than glee. For what it was, he revelled in the small, tantilisaing piece of good news, in such dark times. His death - that was good. Yet, the passions of the devil were sordidly twisted nonetheless in his heightened state.

PALLO IS THE CHEF!!!! Side-node as a CC: I think CC should retain 4 units, owing to the curse on them. Their blood being black and being slightly special works out well for their rp overall and I think it's reasonable enough lore-wise seen as their descendents affected by something else. It also means the CC page doesn't get even more out-dated, god forbid.

To be fair, Shamanism is in a vicious, sad cycle of "the lore is frozen" so nobody can fix its issues so less engagement. Except, of course, for when it gets nerfed and nobody can amend anything to balance out how weirdly Shamanism is treated compared to other magics on the server. I think shamanism is cool and it deserves more love than the stupid nerfs it gets.