LoTC's Next Top Model

this is the best ******* post i literally cried laughing i tried to upvote so many posts i got told i couldn’t upvote anymore today i love you all

Thanks mate, that’s more or less the exact reaction I was hoping for. Unfortunately, to have freeform magic, you really need to outline the limits so that it doesn’t get exploited.

What formatting is incorrect?

conjuration is basically conceptual necromancy regardless

“It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.” Since antiquity, frightful whispers and old wives’ tales of the horrid miscreations created by wizards in their grand spires have served to plague the good name of magic the world over. Men in dark robes filling empty vessels with stolen life, maniacal geniuses creating complicated contraptions to redeem the dead at lightning’s bid, and branded cultists making dark bargains with creatures from beyond the fold to gain power over lesser creatures from their realm. This, however, is none of those tales. This is the story of Life Evocation, known to many by the most common and well known of it’s archetypes, ‘Conjuration’, and while not free of the blemishes of corrupting knowledge, is a comparatively jovial and neutral nature of the art of Conjuration has kept it in a state of general disregard and disinterest by the magical community at large, for better or worse. Regardless, those few who strive to learn the inner workings of life, whether it be out of adoration or some darker intent, tend to find the twinned freedoms of ignorance and opportunity a great boon. From would-be druids desiring to be free of the politics of the circles, biology teachers seeking the absolute most perfect representations of life, and carnival side-show workers seeking perfectly docile exotic animals that may be controlled on a whim, every practitioner of Life Evocation has their own unique reason for mastering this oft-overlooked school of magic. Due to these many paths, the methodology by which the conjured beings enter is similarly heavily varied. Whether it be opening a benign portal to the void from which the beast steps out fully crafted, to having a creature assemble piece by voidal piece in front of him as the conjurationist sternly stares on, each Life Evocationist has a particular and generally unique summoning ritual. These diverse techniques have lead to a highly varied selection of applications, each taking the simple fundamentals of drawing life from the void and applying them in novel ways, several of which remained unknown outside of reclusive cabals prior to recent nights. Surely, this means further developments are merely waiting to be discovered. =============== Life Evocation - Conjuration ================ “The natural phenomena that take place every day before our eyes did not escape my examination.” Certainly the most well known discipline of Life Evocation, so much so that it became its colloquial namesake, Conjuration is the most straightforward of the practices Life Evocationists practice. To conjure a creature is to generate a puppet facsimile of within the void, before bringing the entity to the physical world and filling it with purpose. Conjuration can be cleanly sorted into four separate categories, which are as follows; Terrestrial Conjuration: The process of summoning replicas of living fauna. Anything that a layman could reasonably consider an ‘Animal’ would apply (Including humanoids.). Perennial Conjuration: The process of summoning replicas of living flora. Anything that a layman could reasonably consider a ‘Plant’ would apply (Including natural alchemical regents.) Disjointed Conjuration: A lesser form of conjuration, where incomplete organic components of creatures are summoned separately from the full body they would normally be attached to. A bizarre secondary effect of this method is the velocity from which the conjuration is forcibly shunted from the void, enough to function as a macabre projectile. Chimeric Alteration: Archaically known as ‘Hybrid Conjuration’, Chimeric Alteration is an advanced modification of the summoning ritual involved in Conjuration, whereby the Conjurationist takes the base ‘Frame’ of one creature and imparts additional features and bodily modifications to it, whether that be a wolf with the serrated triangular teeth of a shark, or a bear covered in scaly hide, a sparrow with the elongated tongue of a toad, or a land-capable shark with the legs and respiratory system of a man. General Conjuration Redlines The Conjurer’s Shorthand There exist a handful of rumors and legends, propagated largely through word of mouth and the inevitable distortions of history that comes with it. Whether the stories are based in truth, or an out of control inside joke among Conjurationists to mock the ambition of their students, none can say. Whether truth or myth, certainly all may agree that Conjuration started somewhere, and for lack of a better belief, many choose to feed the rumor mill. The stories have a few traits in common, chronologically; A small number of powerful arch-mages became fixated on the godlike power of creation, and began experimenting tirelessly to attempt and find their own bastardized version. After decades of excruciating, perilous, and often immoral research, they became the first Life Evocationists, though that’s a modern term. The title they personally claimed for their dynasty were ‘Conjurer’. Their powers were great and impressive, massively surpassing that which mages in the modern nights can only attempt to emulate; Beasts the size of dragons, entire armies of men, entirely unique species fabricated entirely through their mind, and even the capability to make these beings permanent. Despite the great power and novelty, however, the Conjurers eventually became aware of the unwieldy nature of their spells. Even miniscule efforts took a great many minutes, and the stress of manually controlling great being, or massive swathes of lesser beings, became a great burden on their mind and body. And so, they got to work with fine-tuning. New methods to forgo power for efficiency, reduce trivial complexities down to self-automated measures of the spell, ignore the need to define aesthetic characteristics, and whatever other trite they grew tired of dealing with. Thus came about, the ‘Conjurer’s Shorthand’. From there, the fairy tales diverge. Whether they took students to stroke their ego while only teaching on the optimized and comparatively minimized versions of the spells, safe-gaurding their ultimate powers with a zealous greed until their dying day, or they simply lacked the ability to define in words (or ancient tomes) the means by which their most extreme methods of creation may be replicated (or some other truly exorbitant tale), one thing is certain: These mythical powers, whether they ever existed, are certainly beyond what any mortals on the present realm would ever be able to learn. So, with origin story out of the way, what does the ‘Conjurer’s Shorthand’ actually mean for Conjurationists? A multitude of things. Firstly, it vastly simplifies the process of creating life. The Conjurationist need not focus on the aesthetics of the creature, as such things are defined (with some variance) by the spell during the summoning. The drawback of such is that the Conjurationist also may not decide such ‘irrelevant’ features on their own. Secondly, all integral processes of life are handled within the spell itself, from respiratory to circulatory, so that the Conjurationist need not constantly focus on the organs of the creature, and can instead focus on directing it. Thirdly, the Conjurationist may elect to let ‘instincts’ take over the creature, although their pattern of behaviour is similar, no matter what the creature is. Individual species may inherit specific quirks related to their typical behavioural parameters, such as pruning feathers or panting. Beyond these simple little traits, their general behaviour would remain heavily docile and non-explorative (regardless of how a standard member of the species would react to stimuli), not drifting farther than thirty feet from the conjurationist at any given point. ============================= Subsection I: Terrestrial Conjuration ============================= “After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause and generation of life.” Every art has it’s most iconic tool, whether it be a fireball or a paintbrush, the first thing an aspiring learner would perfect, and often the most used within the field. For a Conjurationist, this would be Terrestrial Conjuration, to summon a pseudo-animal to accomplish whatever goals you can set your mind to. There are many possible uses of conjuration, and the cleverest Conjurationists may accomplish great tasks in a mere fraction of the time it would take another, given the Conjurationist’s innate ability to create underlings upon which they may delegate tasks. Whether it be simple tasks of hauling great volumes of material, ferrying off a letter, or a more complex task along the lines of fine manipulation (assuming the creature has the requisite limbs, gripping capabilities, and motor function to do so). One may even, if they so desired, simply maintain a small troupe of animals to keep them company, although this would be the magical equivalent of playing with dolls. General Terrestrial Conjuration Mechanics Terrestrial Conjuration - Non-Combat Variant - Non-Combat / Enchantable* / Dependant Summon* Terrestrial Conjuration - Combat Variant - Combat / Enchantable* / Dependant Summon* ============================= Subsection II: Perennial Conjuration ============================= “It was the most beautiful season; never did the fields bestow a more plentiful harvest, or the vines yield a more luxuriant vintage: but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature.” A lesser used capability of the conjurationist is to bring into the world miniature groves of plantlife. While the capabilities of such are certainly limited, and practically a mere parlor trick in comparison to the rest of the spells at a Conjurationist’s disposal, one should never underestimate the value of even the simplest tools they’re given. Perennial Conjuration - Combat / Enchantable* ============================= Subsection III: Disjointed Conjuration ============================= “I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance.” Once there were a slacking student, whose lack of focus during the finer points of his mentor’s drolling lectures resulted in a cataclysmic expulsion of a bull’s head directly into and through a lab table, destroying hours of carefully prepared tinctures and salves. Rather than a great and terrible disciplinary hearing for his mistakes, the clumsy lad was surprised to see his teacher elated and stunned at the student’s display, for through his gross negligence a loophole in standard summoning procedures was found, which allowed the first truly combatative function of conjuration. Due to its discovery during the Conjurationist’s Renaissance, Disjointed Conjuration is a rough and imprecise science, even in comparison to its sister-disciplines. However, the comparitvely low effort and strictly required knowledge involved in Disjointed Conjuration render it a perfect first step for a neophyte in the art. Simply put, Disjointed Conjuration allows the capability to summon individual organs or limbs, which are then capable of being launched as projectiles during the summoning, though not afterwards. Disjointed Conjuration - Combat ============================= Subsection IV: Chimeric Conjuration ============================= “Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?” There comes a time when a conjurationist has intimately familiarised himself with the innards of all that walks beside him, and grows bored with the mundane. When this boredom hits, and it always does, the conjurationist has an out; Through careful experimentation (and quite a many miscreated abominations), a conjurationist may learn how to properly splice aspects from one living being over another. Alternatively, a conjurationist may decide to ‘improve’ upon god’s creation, and malform the proper version of a creature into something a bit stranger. However, even ‘gods’ make mistakes, and it is a frequent occurrence that conjured hybrids are strictly worse than the sum of their parts. Chimeric Alteration - Combat / Non-combat General Chimeric Guidelines Chimeric Terrestrial Guidelines Chimeric Perennial Guidelines =============== Life Evocation - Jing Artificery ================ “Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.” While it may be ancient, the practice of Jing Artificery has only recently entered the general consciousness of Life Evocationists at large. With cloudy origins and no direct attributes, rumors of the progenitor of the esoteric art of Jing is as wild and non-informative as that of it’s sister-practice; Conjuration. Whether the founder be a druid pariah seeking to reform his connection to nature under his own terms, or a blue-cloaked traveler dripping sweet little secrets from Beyond-The-Stars, the point is moot. The process exists, bizarre as it may be, to render quasi-permanent life from the void. Thus, rises a question; ‘What are Jing in the first place’? Simply put, Jing are small charms and items of jewelry specific to the creator, which act as focuses for the Life Evocationist who created them. Generally, Jing are made from bones, feathers, leaves, and other similar small natural materials, in conjunction with tiny gemstones, strung up with twine of plant fiber. The exact shape and size of the Jing varies based on the application it is being created for, though they’re generally vaguely band-shaped, as to fit comfortably around various portions of the body. Now, while anyone can string together a bunch of stuff they found in the woods, an interested magician would need to spend a period of time attuning the craft to their spirit, mind, and body. Generally, this is done as part of the process of making the item, when the Life Evocationist has plenty of time alone with the components. The ritual to bind a Jing to one’s self is a largely meditative process, through which ones expends a portion of their own mana into the charm while focusing on the task one wishes it to accomplish, and forming a personal connection with the item which allows such tasks to be carried out, with it’s aid. A Jing does this by acting as a conduit, through which a Life Evocationist can expend energy to maintain various effects with minimal concentration. General Jing Guidelines ============================= Subsection I: Beastmelding ============================= “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” Legends speak of those who would take on the aspects of animals, spending the entirety of their lives to sow chaos and derision in the world of men. Unrelated, surely, though possibly an inspiration to those whom first discovered the founding school of Jing Artificery; Beastmelding. Beastmelding itself is a curious process, performed (as expected) with Jing. Wearing the charms over specific portions of the body, a Life Evocationist may create limited conjurations overlayed atop their body. While this doesn’t grant the strength or physical capabilities of whatever it is they may steal the features from, superficial traits such as claws, teeth, and fat work exactly as well as one might expect. However, an ability such as this is likely one a civilized magician would think twice about employing in the center of town, as making one’s self appear monstrous may have disastrous social consequences. Another interesting side-effect; As the ‘shapeshifting’ doesn’t directly alter the physical capabilities of a creature being copied, in order to make the absolute most of Beastmelding, one needs a body of adequate physical capabilities, thus rendering a dedicated void mage of many disciplines a less functional Beastmelder than his neophyte student of a single art. Beastmelding - Combat / Jing / Empowerment ============================= Subsection II: Reconstruction ============================= “Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.” One day, a practitioner of Beastmelding had a thought; ‘If I can create flesh without, perhaps I may create flesh within’. Thus began the bloody path to Jing Reconstruction. Jing Reconstruction itself, is the process of using conjured flesh to patch over wounds. A fairly ramshackle process, Reconstruction is the medical equivalent of smothering plaster over a hole in drywall, and cannot do particularly much more than repair flesh wounds. Damaged organs, infection, disease, poison, broken bones, and so forth are all far beyond the capabilities of reconstruction, although if you’ve found yourself with a hole in the gut a merciful Life Evocationist may very well be the last bulwark between yourself and the end. Reconstruction - Non-Combat / Jing / Healing ============================= Subsection III: Binding ============================= “The more I saw of them, the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures.” The pinnacle of the Conjurationist’s art, Binding requires a combination of the use of Jing, as well as the fundamentals of conjuration, in order to create a quasi-permanant form of life, bound to the Life Evocationist who brings them into the world. This process is naturally very difficult, and requires a complete and total understanding of the entirety of Life Evocation’s other capabilities to even begin creating. Through a ritual of binding a pair of Jing to each other, as well as to one’s own self, followed by conjuring the desired animal in such a way that they form around one of the freshly christened Jing. If performed correctly, the resulting conjuration will be intrinsically bound to the Life Evocationist, powered by the linked Jing. For as long as this Jing is on the Conjurationist’s person, their chosen companion will be with them. If their companion is slain, the ritual may be repeated in order to bring about a duplicate of the original companion. Binding - Combat / Jing / Independant Summon =============== Life Evocation - Progression Outline ================ Lore over, let’s talk business. Life Evocation is a more complicated magic than most, especially other voidal magics. As a result, it has a somewhat longer learning progression, split into two sections. The Conjuration subsection of Life Evocation progresses as a standard five-tiers voidal magic, granting availability for a TA at tier five, over the standard period of four months. Jing, however, is much less a science that can be taught, and is rather learned over a two month period of experimentation and self-discovery. In total, Conjuration requires a full six months to fully learn. The learning increments are as follows. Jing Progression =============== Life Evocation - Credits ================ =============== Life Evocation - Final Words & Changelog ================ for those who have difficulty reading

there is literally no way this ends well. at least we finally have a team to moderate the game now, though.

yeah the problem with that is, how long after everyone knew the reform flopped is it removed or reverted? the answer is /usually/ never. even if this policy sinks and everybody on the server realizes it’s a massive flop it’s basically permanent. not to mention it’s broken in the first place. no matter what you think about this new rule/update/whatever, this has to be the most poorly worded rule addition i’ve seen in my entire eight-year lotc tenure. “If you cannot reach a compromise to end the situation, please cooperatively work together to find a middle ground to end the situation”. the rule is literally ‘If you cannot find a compromise please find a compromise’. It seems like telanir came up with this this morning and then didn’t give it time to stew before posting it. and if gms are now not supposed to /moderate/ the /game/, what are they supposed to do? charters are a plugin now, eviction is a plugin now, item renames arn’t supposed to be modreq’able anymore, removing inactive settlements is a different team now, events are a different team, lore disputes are a different team... so, what do gms actually DO?

as far as i know, we have no dark crestures on display. once again, luka closed off the magic section because of a small subset of the void community getting extremely vocal about it.

reading hundreds of books makes you go CRAZY. rhuyne did a lot of it, too. yeah i said the same ****. there were always forbidden sections, and theyve been getting SMALLER each iteration. ct protection is new and a dide effect of massive sweeping changes that werr planned and never done. see my other post for more on that. a new player resource shouldnt be in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere, far from ct. we tried that last map. we tried EXACTLY what people suggested last map. what it ended up being was a place people would come to pick off new players for easy dark mage endgame progress, that most new players couldnt even find. farthermore, with all do respect, very few ct members actually help new players. i end up finding and teaching more new players than i see ct do, since im always at spasn regardless. so the "should dragur be in ct" arguement has a lot more problems in it than most people realize. its functionally an entirely different institution with the same name, and serves a purpose nothing else does. it just so happens to /also/ be a library, and also be /massively/ understaffed.

1. it is a staff project. asking a recently appointed admin of the team that doesnt run dragur proves nothing. 2. luka locked away the magic section because a subset of void mage rp'ers were complaining for weeks that people were self teaching with dragur and learning what magic can do, which are impossible and not a bad thing, respectively. im keeping it locked until post lore games for administrative reasons. 3. i dont even understand this complaint, tbh. new players come into the library, read some stuff, then explicitly leave to find what they read about. with the sole exception of me, noone goes there and spends their whole life there. 4. we havnt had artifacts up in at least two libraries. so, why is it in ct? because the library was supposed to be a lot different then it is now. it was meant to be a resource for new players with full ct involvement, tarre is still in the discord where everything was planned. but sheer apathy and negligence from her, luka, and every other staff member involved really locked us into decay. we couldnt get new sections for the hundreds of books not on display, luka instead added player rooms which he then gave to his dark mage buddies. and so the library became a dark mage hidey hole for a while. couldnt add any new books, because we couldnt add shelves. the ct plans fell through, event plans fell through, everything the actual active librarians tried to do was hard veto'd or outright ignored. luka refused to step down, and we were stuck like that for ages. when he stepped down from admin snd hard left, i was able to take control. im now working with various staff, to try and actually turn dragur into what it was meant to be: a place to preserve server and player history, help dudes out (especially new players), and remain a neutral, non-clique alligned entity. and, whats in the /forbidden/ section..? an administrative area. sorry to break the illusion, but we keep all book donations, and the books not up to par have to go somewhere.forbidden is just bad books, and books about **** i dont think you should be able to learn at a library. hidden lore ****. ps. ive already abolished player rooms having an unraidable ct vault to hoard away mart items and hold bm rituals was a definate actual problem, and something i was complaining about for ages. i also did a full sweep of inactive librarians. in closing were hiring, and if you actually care about dragur enough to want to change it and see it do well, hit me up. ill accept literally anyone who passes the interview. pps. i typed all this out on my phone and am currently out of town so hit me up over the weekend when im back home, ideally.

the point of the chance is to make lotc more squeak clean and marketable and thinking literally any other opinion is just huffing your own farts. telanir has shown time and time again he cares more about how lotc /looks/ than how lotc actually /is/, like when he’d block out talking about how staff is literally ******* kids. the point is, it doesn’t matter how many times you scream “YOURE A BUNCH OF MIDDLE SCHOOLERS WITH NO LIFE EXPERIENCE WHO ARNT ACTUALLY AS SMART AS YOU THINK YOU ARE!”, and it also doesn’t matter that it’s /true/. what matters is that a lot of lotc is really against this rule change, myself mostly because it gives another extremely vague and nebulous justification for randomly banning people you don’t like, under the guise of “they’re talking about /mature/ topics”. Telanir being the exact example of what he says is the problem (repeatedly mocking people for their political opinions) is just /funny/ and an example of how not thought out his plans are. furthermore, replying to everyone saying something contrary to your opinion and going “lol middle school debate club xd” doesn’t make you any more woke than people who actually use lotc as their middle school debate club. i’m just here because advocating for more rules for a staff team that has shown themselves incapable of responsibly monitoring them is a bad idea, especially with regards to something as harmless as people wanting to discuss current events.