Zarsies

The lost soul of a once-herald roils in the deep. Heed the call, brother. Rise, Judge.

polygamist lore :*

Discord: Zarsies#6396 Bid: $10 Skin Name: Swamp witch

Circulated by way of cheap couriers and wanted boards in public spaces is a reproduced parchment printed in the utmost frugal manner bar a sketch. It depicts a hooved feminine form in peasantish attire, a bovine tail, black claws, a noseless and monstrous face, and a curling mantle of horns.

[As per its nature, only characters with an application allowing for the scrying of prophecies such as Seer, Vivication, Naztherak, and so on can observe the contents of this post IC] The vision came to those who sought - Those who peered in mirrors, in brass vessels - it came in the number sticks, and in the waters of shallow pools; It came in crystal balls and in scrying dreams. It bled and danced vividly from those who searched for truth amidst a sconce of flames; A song. Old, melodious. Tragic as it was beautiful. A song of old days. Of dead days. It came amidst the broken image of elves with skin like porcelain and voices like gold, about a great, towering black tree. It came from the voices of great stone halls. From temples with great names, that lurch the hearts of faithful men. A great hawk plummeted with a thousand voices as its screams and was torn apieces, And then it stopped. And all was black. Then a flame flickered - illuminated a sea of shadows. A single candle, amidst the coming dark. The flame danced and wavered. Its form swung back and forth, widened and split. And there stood a great, burning eye. It watched and it knew. It seized and it saw. It bared the soul and it spoke; “W H A T D O Y O U S E E ?” And all was black. Not the black of sleep, but the long dark, the likes of which beheld when a child first contemplates what it means to be dead. And then the smell of the World returned; the breeze of the wind. The cobbles at ones feet. The fires of the hearth. The light that split from a great crystal ball. The reflection of a mirror, of brass, and of water. One woke - dreading the dark, and musing the words of the eye that illuminated when all was pitch and shadow.

A diverse lot of good and strong takes. I appreciate the engagement and deconstruction, it's more than I had when the idea was conjured.

I must preface this is a stray 6am coffee-fueled thought and I do not have a deeply developed thought process on the following topic, merely a stance. Simply put, wouldn't the state and health of player content (magics, feats, creatures, all lore targeting play) be better if it were more accessible? In the days of yore we had magics that took 6 months to master, harsh requirements to attain teacher applications, and no concept of modern injection or lore surgery (let alone amendments, god bless). Things weren't great. I'm of the philosophy magics should be quick to master - those I've most recently written, seer and blood magic, are mastered in 3 months - and relatively easily attained or easy to interact with - seer has an open feat and leans towards non-seer interaction and blood magic's many items can be used by most non-blood mages. My conception of why boils down to: player content should be easy to get into so it's easy to let go. I want everyone to permakill their characters. I think having a PK (or otherwise ultimate shelving, you get me, sunsetting is cool too) as an option in the background of your mind for a character is good and healthy. When it comes to the state of RP I consider people being open and willing to PK to be a sign of good health; when you aren't covetous, protective, and defensive about a character you are avoiding a font of many agonies. Thus the timesink of learning magic and the rarity of player content leads to OOCly motivated behavior: unrealistic defensiveness and foresight, subtle metagaming and/or powergaming, and ultimately a resistance to PKing and avoiding or kneecapping conflict. I find that clinging to be a sort of pain and, pardon my French, a sort of RP-immaturity. I don't mean to shame those who don't PK, obviously LotC has a deeply ingrained mechanic to allow characters to endure between monk resurrection and no enforced aging, but in the end I believe it to be good to allow yourself to experience it and always expect or be open to it. There's catharsis and great satisfaction in conclusions. This leads me to the topic of this thread: avenues to player content. What are your thoughts on a system where self teaching and grandfathering are more open? For example, say a player has had a TA in a magic and fully taught 3 players across - I don't know, 1 year? - and has received 0 infractions in that time. Therein lies an implication of trust. I propose we may give such a player a sort of pass, whenever they wish once their TA-having character PKs or is otherwise ultimately shelved, to self-teach and/or be grandfathered into the given player content as they wish. A successful reigning lich with 6 total students, 1.5 years playtime, and 0 infractions has their phylactery crushed in some cool tense betrayal RP. They of course PK. In 3 months they apply to self-teach necromancy on a new character. A fire evocationist plays for 2 years, proliferates the magic like wildfire (hah), the ST has 0 problems with them or their students over that time, and ultimately they choose to shelf their character by sailing away with their spouse. 6 months later the player wants to try a new style of caster, perhaps a farfolk dancer in a South Hub settlement, and they want to capture the firedancer aesthetic instead of the wizard they just played. They apply to self-teach fire evocation. The system would need checks and brakes of course but as a general concept what do you think of this? I'm very much a believer that factions and tribalism are the death of player content and the more people involved, playing, and having fun the merrier. Someone getting a toy to play with you also have is not a detriment to the whole. Let's spread lore.

Hello, I'm from the Based Department. We would like to notify you that we are impressed with your work. Thank you.

This warms my heart. There is hope for Void magic with this community :' ) In other news, horror rewrite is close. Maybe they'll get reviewed at the same time.

Eldritch chibis. Cth-uwu. My favorite.

Usual protocol is to allow people to drop it if they want so I expect (and hope) that to be the case. Corc certainly, silit I doubt. Same ol same ol for those already cured.

To note, the reason we've done this is because we're pleased with silit lore but see things missing; how the mentality is roleplayed such as players being more human than monster, how there's no elder vampire monster aesthetic (e.g. wings), how the strong vampire trope isn't fulfilled (notably balanced by being noncombative), the weakness to sunlight being gentle, and so on. With this addition we mean to adjust vampire traits to hit the marks we want without laying on something that adds to their features too much or makes them too strong. As I said on the previous thread by Fooldude, I very much like how siliti are roughly mid. I'd call it competent but not competitive compared to other CAs and mindful changes like these satisfy my anxiety around powercreep. I hope this addition pleases the communities and gives them something they look forward to playing with!

A grizzled vagabond rests easier in his grave. He felt mercy by a kind hand and it was fair and good; warm winds upon him.

Late to the party, apologies. Enjoying Finland ;^) . I dig and appreciate the enthusiasm but have nothing to add to the existing comments, this isn't a necessary or good edit and contradicts the spirit of the writing. I want siliti to remain mid roughly speaking and death timers aren't the place to explore tweaking them for the better. A dead silit has to rely on people reaching out through the rite of reflection to find out they're dead and then wrangle their court for revival. The many reasons either of those steps may not happen are reason enough for them to wait out the timer. Alt characters are good for gut health!

28idle Productions LLC is endorsed by the Zarsies Foundation. Tip!

In a pit of dry gore a horned giant prepares for battle. It refuses any master. What won't bleed will burn; men, kindred, gods.

Late per usual, apologies. If I had to guess we'll probably put a cap on the number of people it can hit but it'll still be "many". As time goes on I lean further and further into wanting nothing to do with player content. The toys I make get misused or misrepresented (or both). There's an inevitable breakdown in the cooperation of roleplay and either the user or the subject (or both) agonize over their misalignment, bicker about the rules, and leave the argument without closure. They mald in their group chats and proliferate 'takes', uninvolved folks create preconceived notions of x y z, and they stick to those conclusions. I'm of course generalizing but I've had very few successes in remedying this conundrum and see no real solution other than having frank conversations about community behavior, our shared expectations for roleplay, and how we police these things without soiling what modicum of fun we have. Player content (i.e. the LotC term lore, not the word, that has to do with players like magics and creatures) can't be written to be 'powerful' and trust completely in the good will, virtues, and disciplined constraint of the user; inevitably there's poor roleplayers who misuse, abuse, or otherwise pierce the language of the given piece to inflict their vision of their story on others. Not everyone weighs tension, drama, fun, fairness, etc. as a player and make non-optimal choices in-character for the sake of others (cough cough, cooperation). On the flip side player content shouldn't be written to cater to the utmost obnoxious, selfish, 'gaming' (without standard virtues), haughty, and cynical players because then we neuter our fun by making our toys drab and boiled down to the point of tastelessness. If every magic was written in the philosophy of rock paper scissors, could only be distinguished by their color, everyone had perfect knowledge of their mechanics, and everyone had an instant remedy/counter to all interactions then where's the fun and inspiration? It would be safe and perfectly balanced (ignoring policing) but homogeneous. Oatmeal. Anyone writing player content has to navigate that spectrum. They will assuredly fail in one way or another because no matter how much we redline things to hell and back, foresee bad faith use and patch holes, and actively police use, amendments are required. It's just how LotC works. Our lore is alive. We do what we can to thread that needle so everyone has as much fun as possible as often as possible. Too much in either direction is - as we've learned over the years - is not fun. Success is somewhere in the middle and typically leans towards toddler-proofing. It's the internet after all. All that said, I believe I've sufficiently waged this battle already. It's nothing like the old ability yet satisfies the fantasy. It was a bad spell poorly written and used by knobs, all terrible things individually. The current spell is as neutered and boiled down as I could stomach but it can still be used by knobs. I strongly suspect the issue isn't the lore but the people you're engaging with. Both sides are valid; having a ceremony disrupted by bleeding tears can be both jarring, unwanted, and edgy as well as surprising and thrilling. It's a matter of who is on both ends and what their wants/expectations are. Misalignment makes it unfun but it doesn't matter how it happens. A magic spell, a combat rule, tone like comedy vs seriousness, voice like flowery and long vs concise and punchy, styles of dialogue, modernisms vs archaisms, etc etc. If you don't like how someone plays you should talk to them about it so you can still play together. If that doesn't work out, don't play with them. I say all this not in defense of lore itself, it can just as bad as the aforementioned virtue-less knobs, but because in this instance I'm quite sure there's more to the problem than the rules as written. I'm sure the team will come up with a number to cap it, we could debate for months about the logic behind what that number is and why it should be higher or lower, but that's the bugaboo of balance. As I already said lore already requires upkeep so logically no piece is perfect and timeless; there's plenty of things that aren't addressed this instant that warrant review. Blood magic isn't perfect and because of the users - LotCers as a whole - and the people they'll teach it'll get amended over and over. I wish people would talk to me in this spirit. Seeing players echo that mystics and ghosts are dumb, blood mages are edgelords, vampires are virgins, spooks should be avoided/killed at all costs, keep spook players out of communities, blah blah blah it all stings. It's demoralizing to see people sniping at each other and baiting for upvotes. I'm probably being unnecessarily sensitive but it doesn't feel like we have much community camaraderie and therein lies the poison. Related to this, blood magic is in desperate need of its second half. I posted it and reiterated during revisions that the second slot is very unfinished and there's a lot I cut out so it could be up in a timely manner. The majority of requests I get ask for it to focus more on combat since it's overwhelmingly ritualistic / has little in-hand spells. I hate writing for combat. It exacerbates the struggle I've outlined above because players get heated and abandon fun in their application of the fantasy. If I pour the necessary hours into writing it, slave over revisions (because numbers and I don't get along) to appease ST, and see it through after months of progress it can all still be used by edgelord weebs out to win and dictate their story. Their misuse creates a broad misrepresentation of what I've worked on and when I muster the time and energy to play I hear it reduced down to a single generalization. I feel it's implied by every quip that Zarsies is the factory of evil and everything he touches is to be avoided. We ought to summarily remove the lore. I'm unsure if or when I'll write the addition because y'all can be bummers. :(