Esterlen

Imagine trying to defend this quality of “”RP””. You could find better on Fortnite or GMod dark RP.

Stress.

The Premier of Kaedrin reads the missive, his flickered wig askew slightly. He strains against the writing, his already beady eyes squinting at it. “I should think to undertake a Morsgradi trial is as interesting an idiom as I have yet heard. You could say Franz Carrion undertook a Morsgradi trial upon himself...or perhaps John the Third, John the Fourth, and John the Sixth. A terrible thing, the old Morsgradi trial. My dear late wife, even, with her consumption, would have done well to undertake one as a remedy.” He pauses for a moment as Samuel de Langford fails to laugh at his joke. “We mustn’t speak ill of the dead, I agree.”

Very very nice. Reminds me of the heket from Guild Wars, which to my mind is a good thing! +1

I'll be honest and state that I haven't even really thought about this part. I haven't participated in monk RP since around 2012 I think, and so I really am not an authority about any of those matters. Do we have to abide by these restrictions or can an exemption be made? Is the change-your-mind clause codified into rules? It's a process that would require OOC consent, and so it's unlikely that anybody would change their mind. I think people who want to become one of these creatures will be completely understanding of the various restrictions imposed on them and so I don't really see the necessity of such a rule. But if we have to roll with it, we have to roll with it, I guess. Again, this isn't something I know a lot about nor have I thought about it for that reason. I'd suggest that they weren't immune to magically created diseases, but would probably have some resistance to soul puppetry and blood magic. But I really don't know. If you can come up with some suggestions as to that, post them, because magic's a topic I know barely anything about. You'd be better to take that up with Matt. I mean again, I don't know the nature of these curses but I don't see why not. Unless we're running the risk of creating characters who are a layered trifle cake of different curses. What do you suggest? I love the Witcher and the world of the Witcher. That's obviously very clear, and I've been inspired greatly by Sapkowski and CDProjekt's works alike in writing this lore. With that said, the key word here is inspired. You're doing me a massive disservice by insinuating that things are 'completely plagiarized' or a 'carbon copy' because if you read the post, nothing could be further than the truth. Yes, tropes, influences and themes have been taken from a variety of different sources, predominantly the Witcher, but also historical folklore, Warhammer and even the Underworld movie series (Even though Bill Nighy's gone down the drain lately). Does that make anything copied and plagiarized? No. Every word of the original document is my own or Matt's. We are not using anybody else's work and trying to pass it off as our own, even if we are references other forms of media. The answer to this is simple: We did this because we thought it was cool. We thought it added some cool flavor, you know, and saw it as a way of including a wide breadth of historical characters and personas in our lore. This lore is inclusive by nature, not exclusive, and I've always adhered to that principle. With that said, if anybody doesn't want their character being used in this post, I'll take them out. I don't have much right to use them without your permission, after all, I just thought it was a cute nod to various prominent individuals of the server's history. As for the ruahdrel - consider it a placeholder name. Find me a translation for 'blood-sucker' or something of the like and I will sub it in post-haste! You know what us human players are like! Alas, it can't be helped. If it's an issue to the LMs or the general playerbase, we'll change it. Location is not the most important part of this lore by any means. SupremacyOps sort of raised this when we talked to him about this. I think the conclusion we came to is that the original document of this post was chiefly reflective of IC belief and not necessarily canon. The Unseen are probably aengudaemonic in nature and from our world - nobody really knows in-character. It's a mystery. If we have to come to an OOC canon, then we'll do just that. We just thought it makes sense that some lunatic sorcerer who accidentally summons them came to the (Probably erroneous) conclusion that they were unspeakable demonic horrors from another plane. I'm not really sure what to do with this as again it's something I'm happy to compromise on, so if you have any suggestions that would make things more acceptable to the detail-stickler LMs, I am all ears! Thank you for your kind words though, father Michael. Of all people your criticism is valued immensely. I've already responded to this in a prior post, quoting you directly. Please, please read it and respond to what I've said there, for the sake of my sanity. It's very easy to manipulate information (Especially strengths and weaknesses) in a particular way that serves your agenda. I can do it as well. You need to look at things from a much more critical viewpoint instead of just falling back on lore orthodoxy and conservatism. I'd expect somebody who pushed through 'mud maiden' lore to be infinitely more open-minded. Regardless, I'm prepared to add more weaknesses to achieve the balance that you want. Offer me a few suggestions, and I'll consider them. I think you need to stop looking at lore from an adversarial, challenger's perspective (This should be denied because of x) and instead of evaluate things based on merit alone, especially in a circumstance such as this one where I will happily compromise. I thought about this and I thought it was too cliche and impractical to make sunlight intolerable to strigae. Given that night lasts only what, 20 minutes on the server, I just don't consider it viable. But a weakness (Diminished capabilities) in sunlight is something I'm willing to think about, definitely. No, I actually like this. I'll consider a few options about things that can act as 'vampire repellent'. No, they can't really do this. Blood is like alcohol to them, and they're all inherently alcoholics. It's technically not necessary, but it's damn hard to go cold turkey - and why would they? We could easily say that there's something (Genus?) present in the blood of descendants that they can't get from animal blood. It's an intricacy that again, I'm open to suggestions for. Think of it through the lens of a lich's phylactery. I believe I mentioned in the original post that the minimum time for regenerating a new body once the brain has been destroyed is 9 years - that's 9 solid weeks of not having a character combined with absolutely no use of the Monks under any circumstances. I definitely think that's a decent drawback, combined with the concept of being too weak to even walk for the first few years in a new body. But I want to make it clear that the time it takes to regenerate might have a minimum but is usually more depending on how a striga has died, on a case-by-case basis. If a pyromancer turns you to ash, you can expect to be out of action for the greater part of a real-life year. Similarly, if another striga doesn't help you regenerate for whatever reason, you can expect to stay dead. If you're killed by another striga, you can expect to stay dead. The memory loss rule still applies in all cases. I agree that it practically needs to be elaborated on a tad, but that's something that wouldn't require more than a few lines of clarification. The body's destroyed, the ethereal spirit lingers around, if another striga finds that spirit then over the span of a nine year minimum period they can regenerate a new body. I think it's not much different to lich lore in terms of being 'unkillable', in fact it's more difficult to cope with because of the time restriction. I was thinking this: the counter is, you're not meant to be found out. Obviously this is the same with frost witches, but the foremost aspect of striga RP in the lore we've written is that they're masters of deception and hiding in plain sight. I don't think we're going to be that under-powered. ^^^ I agree completely. They won't be running around attacking people and causing mayhem. They'd be blending into society trying not to draw attention to themselves, or alternatively living on the fringes of society. They are supposed to be masters of subversion and not destruction. I've always held to the principle that this kind of lore should have an OOC vision of providing RP and dynamic RP enrichment to others, often to the detriment of those playing the characters. You subordinate your own interests, plans and often your enjoyment for the benefit of the greater tapestry that is the community's story. If prospective striga players cannot accept that and want to simply cause as much chaos as possible, they will not be playing strigae. Strigae are inherently secretive creatures who don't particularly want their peace disturbed by mortals paying excess attention to their kind. This lore is for the server as a whole to develop roleplay out of, not simply a small minority. I think people feel disillusioned with frost witch RP because they don't perceive it as following this OOC vision. Originally yes, but this is changeable and unimportant. Basically, we thought it was ridiculous to have the boons of a striga combined with those of any sort of mage. Yes, it's a restriction to appease the staff but also we personally feel it'd be too unfair and unbalanced to have things any other way. We could attribute this reasoning to something like their greatly diminished ability to naturally produce genus and mana. Exerting themselves through the use of what tiny amounts of mana they have latent would just kill them, for example. Yes, I'd love to do this. I'm a massive fan of any cultural development. I'm already even in the process of it now, but if this lore never sees the light of day there'll be no point. You're welcome to help me if you want! We did talk about this, but I thought it would be detrimental to the general feel of the lore and just result in unnecessary drama if we put players in a position where they are forced to cause as much conflict as possible. It'll get to the point where nobody finds it enjoyable. An issue I have with frost witches is that they're always forced into a particular archetype because of the constant necessity to prey on mortals. I want striga to be diverse - I'm not advocating for 'vegan vampires' here, but rather a diverse range of striga characters whose individual approach to their addiction to blood is different and calculated, as opposed to 'well we'll just sit in a tower and try and lure some people in to eat them'. Not trying to bash you here, frosties, but this is another difference. There are only two forms and neither of them can change. A bestial form and a mortal one. A mortal form is what you looked like prior to transformation, with a few differences such as paler skin, green-yellow eyes and slightly sharper teeth. A bestial form is the true form and is still humanoid, save animalistic facial features. Neither form carries any real benefit except arguably longer teeth in the bestial form and the ability to blend into society in mortal form. Talons can be grown in either form. When agitated, emotional, feeding, hunting, fighting or exposed to massive quantities of blood (A battlefield) a striga is forced to assume their bestial form. Lulu's made effectively all the points I have, and better at that. I implore you to read her post. Refer to this post and my prior ones, specifically my immediately last one where I compared strengths and weaknesses of a striga and frost witch. I don't think things are unbalanced. Super-strength is a myth - I never said anything about it. But if that's the general consensus more weaknesses can be added. Advocates with bias and a political agenda have endeavored to manipulate and omit strengths and weaknesses so as to prove their point, but I can do that just as well. I'd be in favor of doing something like this. Unfortunately I know nothing about souls and the lore submission post told me to stray away from ever mentioning them. I think Matt has already addressed most of your concerns, @Dohvi.

I think the issue here is that you're deliberately manipulating information in a particular way to serve your end. A more accurate list would go: Strengths: -Immortality -Marginally extra strength and speed (Read the original post, under the strengths category - since this was cause to confusion, I changed it to be explicit in its wording) -Talons and fangs -Regeneration I've omitted smell and saliva because they're absolute minutia. Neither are needed for the lore. The first is a nice RP mechanic, but can it detract from anybody else's experience in any way? A real advantage can't actually be gained from saying 'we have a heightened sense of x'. According to lore, elves have a heightened sense of sight, but is this really useful aside from enriching RP with a throwaway emote? For what it's worth, frost witches are able to identify their own kind as well. Saliva was again, just my attempt to add flavor in. It can be axed. Weaknesses: -Infertile -Other holy/immortal weaknesses such as gold -Dogs, canines, most mammals can know what they are -Lose grip on reality if exposed to too much blood -Absolutely no magic -Numerous ways of discovery, upon which they're liable to be dealt with speedily In contrast- Strengths: -Immortality -Ice magic -Talons and fangs (Frost witches have them as well!) I don't consider shapeshifting a strength to the frost witches just as I don't consider it a strength to strigae. To my mind, it's more or less cosmetic in origin. Weaknesses: -Infertile -No special magic while appearing normal (Is this really a weakness? I can easily apply the same to many of the 'heightened skills' [which might I add are being hyped up by a few people as being some superpowers they're legitimately not] and say they can't be used in a normal form) -Numerous ways of discovery, upon which they're liable to be dealt with speedily -Fire and heat See, I can manipulate and interpret strengths and weaknesses to serve an agenda as well. We need to look at this from a more holistic viewpoint and I'd urge you to be less influenced by the 'lore orthodoxy' of the Fjarriauga. There is room in this town for the two of us. There are a few things I'm more than happy to amend so as to keep the peace. I will cut out the 'saliva paragraph' completely. I will, on zaezae's suggestion, change it so that a striga who has not fed recently feels hot to the touch, not cold. I will endeavor to find another weakness or 'identifier' comparable to the frost witch's lack of blood when cut. I have already clarified that the level of strength and speed a minority are railing against is not what you think it is, and amended the original post accordingly. I will even change it so that strigae are not immortal and ageless, but merely live relatively long compared to humans, not that this practically means anything other than semantics. I want to respond to your post in full @Mithradites but I'm dying of sleep deprivation and so will hopefully get around to that tomorrow. To answer your question about the word 'ruahdrel' though: it's an absolute placeholder because I had nothing else. If you can get me an approximate ancient elven translation of 'blood-sucker', I will use that instead. The quotes are meant to just add flavor and if they offend anyone's sensibilities can be changed or outright canned. My apologies about the references to Aeldin and the Witcher inspiration, but you know how us human RPers are!

It seems to be necessary since you seem to be ignoring what I'm saying and only hearing what you want to hear. Meanwhile, what you're repeating is something that just blatantly isn't true. I'm inspired by a great many sources Witcher, Warhammer and folklore, but I never copy from them, and to say that I do is insulting. I've used a lot of art from the Witcher in the original topic, yes. But every single sentence of that post is my own writing, or Matt's. I haven't ripped anything off and merely 'changed' a few words as you're putting it. You're doing me a disservice by saying so. I don't know why I have to spell this out to you in simple points. Read the document again, in its entirety, read every word of it. Don't just skim over it. And if you still genuinely see nothing 'specifically making them different' from Fjarriauga, then I'll make you a Venn diagram if it'll keep you happy.

The thing is, I think this argument is based on a strawman, a completely false premise. It was never my intent for this lore to come across as giving strigae super-strength or super-speed. I said in a former post that (Pardon the shitty copy paste): "I don't care too much for buffing a character up to an unreasonable degree. Strength, to my mind, was never intended to construe anything greater than that of a relatively fit, mortal person for their respective body size - swiftness, agility and 'evasiveness', is the same. Not to any sort of supernatural extent but rather just comparable to that of an athletic, well-rounded person. " To me, that hardly construes a 'massive boost' especially compared to a wide breadth of magical abilities that frost witches have access to. I admittedly have no idea what you mean by 'very specific situations'. Stop repeating yourself. You won't find a single part of this document copy-pasted from any Witcher source, except for some nomenclature and some images. I haven't plagiarized a thing, and if you were as well-versed in Witcher lore as you're making out you are you'd recognize that there are ample differences.

I know it doesn't - which is why I'm not making it in regards to frost witches. Your lore is your lore and you are entitled to restrict that to whatever demographic you so please, in fact I literally said I'm no proponent of equal opportunity semantics, however that aforementioned phrase applies to me and my lore as well. I'm merely questioning why you feel it necessary that a demographic be denied from even the tiniest bit of niche overlap which seems to consist of 'feeds on mortals' on account of your own unrelated lore which does deny it. wow are you seriously still angry about princess vittoria please grow up that was ic and happened legitimately over two years ago now I'll be as abrasive as I want when an argument is introduced to me in an equally abrasive fashion. In my response to _mkkk_'s post, you'll notice I hold no such demeanor. Seems fairly reasonable to me. "i don't like you so your lore is therefore invalid. you can't have anything to do with my clique" I'm extremely committed to developing and enriching the server and its lore for the benefit of the entire community and dynamic roleplay as a whole. My own personal interests do not come into this, nor does my personality or my RP history with you of all people. You err greatly to decry me as evil and toxic merely because I hold an opposing viewpoint to you and moreover because I responded to you in the same aggressive manner you initially attacked me in. As I think SupremacyOps once said, a very long time ago: Don't dish it out if you can't take it. I've done a great deal of worldbuilding and writing and I see no issue here. Your uniqueness is not being infringed upon. We share a few theoretical qualities and in my eyes they're completely immaterial and moreover can be compromised to a degree. For cold skin, I wanted a weakness and another 'identifier' that picks out a striga. Blood-drinking is obviously the natural premise of this kind of creature. Shapeshifting in my eyes is of a completely different nature to that of a frost witch. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what's a frost witch's 'bestial' form but that of a slightly bluer, fanged version of their normal form? I don't know why we can't share the niche - hell, you can even have the lion's share of it if you want. That does happen in natural ecosystems, after all.

This was always intended to be a very mild chemical boon - hardly the kind of agent that would leave you bleeding to death and totally unaware of a wound you've suffered. I'm more than happy to tone the wording down or even remove it completely - to me it just made sense as these are adaptations that blood-drinking animals like the vampire bat have developed naturally. I'll edit things immediately to clarify that we're not talking Prince Aleksei Nikolaevich hemophilia here ("Papercut yourself and bleed to death") with the painlessness of modern local anesthetic. I don't care too much for buffing a character up to an unreasonable degree. Strength, to my mind, was never intended to construe anything greater than that of a relatively fit, mortal person for their respective body size - swiftness, agility and 'evasiveness', is the same. Not to any sort of supernatural extent but rather just comparable to that of an athletic, well-rounded person. As for regeneration and the fatality of wounds - look at things from the lens of a walker from AMC's the Walking Dead. You can only 'kill' a walker by destroying its brain. Other wounds have little to no effect. How much harder to kill does that make a walker than a normal human being? The answer is not much. Of course I'm being facetious and not taking into account variables like a walker's slowness, but the point's still there. No, I agree with what you've said about memory recollection. Truth be told, I didn't even think about that, and it'll be added in post-haste. 'Deaths' in this fashion will be subject to the same restrictions Cloud Temple revivals are, to prevent meta-gaming etc. No recollection for the 30 mins/1 hour (Or whatever it is, I have no idea since I haven't revived myself at a Cloud Temple since 2012) before a death.