Ventusyr

The lore is finally done, with the edits decided between ski and I finished. Could this be moved back to lore suggestions? Thanks!

I was actually thinking about this today. Inverted the paragraph and everything. Having muted effects for both, and the ability to counter each other's abilities, would be necessary to create good roleplay. I'm down with your suggestion then! I'll add that to the List of Things to Do.

Give it a purpose for it's existence. It's a neat idea, but there's little reason to implement another Aengudaemon when they don't have a specific goal in mind.

"The Masters of Necromancy have broadened the range and capabilities of the drain. The target is no longer required to be immobile for the drain to begin, but needs to be within 7-8 feet (3-4 blocks) of the Necromancer. Upon beginning, it will immediately paralyze the victim, as the body pulls blood to the vital organs in an attempt to keep them running, the area of the drain’s focus will blacken, as the skin directly under it begins to perish. A burning sensation will cover their body, as excruciating pain floods down their arms and legs, the skin of their extremities dying, and beginning to peel off in small sheets. Their nervous system will begin shutting down, blinding them, they would be deafened, being unable to even hear themselves. Their sense of smell and taste will be overwhelmed with the stench of sulphur, as searing heat covers their throat and lungs. The body will attempt to rapidly burn any excess of fat, trying to supply energy to the failing organs. After a few minutes, the victim will perish." "Masters of Necromancy have increased the range of which they can tether onto targets, being able to do so if the target is within five-six feet of the Necromancer, they have also perfected a way of transferring the tether. If a corpse comes in physical contact of an individual, the Necromancer can switch the tether supplying the corpse from himself to the target, so that the corpse is fueling off the life-force of the target instead of that of the Necromancer. This tether will be broken if the target flees back 7-10 feet (5-6 blocks) from the corpse, or if the corpse’s head is removed/crushed. Targets who are tethered will immediately feel fatigued and dizzy. Their heart-rate will increase drastically, but their movements themselves will become sluggish and slowed. Physical strain will cause the target excruciating pain, flaring up around the joints. Their eyesight will become dimmed, shadows and flashes replacing it, if the tether is held for a long period of time, they would be temporarily blinded. Their hearing would be replaced with a ringing, itself fading out into deafness. Their mouth will dry, and their breathes will fill like sand running across their throat. The skin on the arms and legs would turn ashen as it begins to perish, layers of it beginning peel off in sheets. If the target runs 18-20 feet (9-10 blocks) from the necromancer, he’ll be unable to keep the the tether, causing it to dissipate. Though the effects of the tether would continue for a few minutes after it is broken. Masters can have up to maintain up to six of these Tethers as once." I got it from your guide...? And being killed by a necro in such a way? Even if it isn't OP, it doesn't produce roleplay for a necro or wraith to drain an Itharel, as it is as effective as stabbing them in the back. I'm against forced backstabbing for RP fights, as that isn't an RP fight but an instakill that produces no roleplay. If you guys are truly concerned with creating roleplay between clerics and necros, or wraiths and Itharel, then tone down the abilities, don't pursue giving Itharel drainable life force, or make it so clerics can break tethers and such with holy light.

I'm very skeptical about the life force drain. First of all, it is quite OP. A T5 necromancer can kill someone in agonizing ways IMMEDIATELY if they come within a few feet of them, and slowly (but still painfully) if they are further. The pain is such that whoever is suffering from it won't be able to summon their magic or do anything except writhe and scream. So, no, I don't think Itharel should have life force to drain. That won't make epic battles, that'll just be wraiths insta-killing Itharel slightly slower than they can insta-kill everybody else. Katari was right in saying there are plenty of ways to kill an Itharel, especially mundane ways, and THOSE will actually bring some roleplay to battles rather than a life drain that can't be countered. At all. I only listed a couple of the changes that will be made to Itharel. There are going to be many, and I'll publish them into the lore. Trust me, these guys are most definitely defeatable now.

After discussion with the player of Kyral, it's been clarified it was a temporary relief from the insanity caused by the disconnection, not a permanent erasure of symptoms. They returned after a few days. In the RP where Arkelos' character told my character, the part where the symptoms eventually returned was not mentioned. As for Itharel, they have been reworked, I just need to update the thread. They are now far weaker: they no longer have access to priest healing magic (instead, they have to reform like Dread Knights over long periods of time), and they are very vulnerable to any and all weapons provided it makes it through their armor (their ichor is like blood, only kept in by the skin. If that is cut, and the Itharel bleeds out, they go into a comatose state to reform that can take several elven days). They are also being renamed to the Venators. So, much to (I hope) the joy of our darker community, they have indeed been nerfed quite a bit, and are actually killable (sort of) now.

After some discussion, the explanation for healing is staying. It's the channeling of Aengulic power that is overwhelming and having it just be a simple thing in the context of the difficulty of first connections, and since 2014 losing focus has brought disastrous consequences. The calming light shall not be removed either, but the drawbacks of it shall be more clear and the energy drain shall increase, so that such a spell in combat would hardly be convenient, except to prevent it. Alright, so gonna make a checklist on things left to do for the lore: [ ] Finish implementing Three Mechanisms of Healing [ ] Expand on effects of disconnection [ ] Write in changes to Itharel. [ ] Add that clerics can have more than four colors [ ] Fix Creator cleric origin [ ] Remove Order-specific cleric abilities [ ] Edit that priest healing is still burning to dark beings [ ] Edit that war cleric light is the same burning, you can just hold it for longer periods of time [ ] Clarify that the times spent in each tier are an example, and not a canonized thing [ ] Change taint purging so it can be done by clerics of all tiers, to varying degrees of skill, as our magic was made to destroy taint [ ] Add in that PH can do taint healing (This is after discussion with druids. A tier 5 priest could do about as much tainted land as a body would occupy, so this is still blight healer's domain. Blight healers can also legally purge bodily taint if we get to do any land taint.) [ ] Add in mental healing, with an accompanying example emote [ ] Add in that you can be T5 in both WC and PH [ ] Edit that blessing can be learned by both WC and PH [ ] Remove the vision thing for disconnection, unless the MAT/LT deems a cleric a poor RPer, in which case proof of their inability to properly RP a cleric must be brought up prior to vision/disconnection [ ] Nerf the Light of Calming spell [ ] Clarify clerics from all walks of life and from the last MAT can disconnect I'll put in little green Os or something in the boxes when I finish em. I'm going to need some time; college has just started for me. Again, I thank you for all the feedback y'all have given me!

Will these be actually hidden in chests in dungeons and such, or will there be events to find em?

Thank you! I look forward to it!

Your argument for scar healing is pretty good. If we can heal some scar tissue, I don't suppose there's any problem with healing all, though. It would just be kind of a waste of cleric magic to heal a scar that doesn't affect the patient negatively, but we can leave that to the cleric's discretion. Clerics being romantics has kind of ruined our IC and OOC reputation. If a cleric is spending their time flirting and trying to get it on with the local fertile elvish women, or devoting their time to a family rather than their mission to establish purity in the realm, I'm definitely sure Tahariae would have issues with it. It can easily be interpreted as breaking the Second Tenet, and not properly accomplishing the Third. This should especially apply to Itharel. As for disconnection healing with therapy, and the shifting of deities, we have Skale, who got disconnected from the clerics to join Xan. Got the therapy from the Itharel Rosencratz. There is also Kyral, who betrayed Tah to become something and is now a Druid. Her symptoms were banished by Herun (citation needed, can't remember her explanation fully, but it was one of the Xan Itharel thingies). Straight-up banished. Beros used runesmithing or something to disconnect himself and become a runesmither, and from what I've seen has suffered no side effects. Had numerous clerics let me know they are pursuing becoming an Ascended... It's pretty common to jump ship on Tahariae for a new one.

To be honest, I feel like the effects of disconnection shouldn't be healable through clerical therapy. If someone is going to give up their patronage, even to submit to another deity, they should still feel the effects. Therapy helps problems with the mind; disconnection rips your soul. I will elaborate more on it in the OP. This won't apply to those who have already been disconnected and got the therapy for it, but disconnection should be a horrific, literally-soul scarring experience that there is no recovering from. I find jumps between deities very silly and ridiculous as well, so just keep the effects of disconnection. Your point about scars is very good. I'll put in the OP that clerics can't heal scars. Self-healing shouldn't be possible beyond a T2 heal. You cannot focus through the pain. If healing anything more than a small cut was done on the battlefield, the cleric would likely be too exhausted from the healing to return to the battle. The adrenaline and general thrill of the fight would make concentrating too difficult to summon healing light and heal something after just backing out of a fight. Heal it after the battle is over, and through mundane methods or via an another cleric would be best. Itharel being married has always really confused me. It's... Kind of embarrassing and doesn't help the cleric rep of holy men who want to bone everything. Itharel should not have a sex drive or be involved in romance in any way. If they did, I don't think it would be unreasonable to have their Itharelhood removed, because their dedication to purity is held back by their affections (which, if they are incapable of love, are literally using the mortals for purely sexual pleasure, which is even worse for clerical rep). Inter-Aengulic relations are interesting. Xan and Tahariae are considered brothers; the last vision from Tahariae was Him telling clerics to ally with Paladins in another Sacred Light type thing. I recently wrote a sort of bible for clerics, and one of the doctrines is that clerics should not marry, unless their spouse is a fellow Aengudaemon worshipper who is devoted to purity as well. If they focus more on their romance than wandering about healing, or making themselves available for patients, then they would be disconnected.

What the hecky?! Yeah, people can't heal during combat; takes too much focus. Self-healing is also always far more difficult, since pain is very distracting. I'll clarify that, thank you for bringing that up! With the blemishes thing, healing yourself of scars should be impractical, but healing others' scars should be all right within, say, an Elven week of the injury received? Would that be fair? Could you clarify what you mean about personal greed for the cleric magics? Do you mean using war cleric magic to achieve your own mortal goals, and only using priest healing on people you know and nobody else? Things like that? Could you elaborate on what you mean by Clerical Depression? Do you mean the depression that occurs after disconnection?

After some investigation, I'm writing in the Three Mechanisms of Healing, an apparently established aspect of cleric magic that wasn't well known at all. The mechanisms are speed, pain, and scarring. A cleric can take the healing slow and carefully, causing minimal to no pain and reducing scarring at the cost of the spell being quite exhausting. It is exhausting because of the Aengulic energy you have summoned; it is bottled up inside of you and released slowly, which is difficult for the cleric to hold. The cleric can also release the energy all at once while performing the spell as well, making the healing far easier. However, although making the healing fast, it causes scarring and pain appropriate to the level of injury. Clerics can focus on one or two of the mechanisms as well, reducing pain but maintaining the speed and scarring of the healing, for example. This allows for diversity in how clerics go about healing, and shall bring in more types of healing to cleric RP. Gonna need a bit of time to add this into the OP and edit the emotes to reflect this. What the hecky. Yeah, I'll put that in the red lines. Thanks!

We've been working on mixing up our RP. We understand people are a little tired of the simple prayer and lay-on-hands healing. I fought that by introducing candles and applying of prayed-over oils and doing it over an altar and making healings more riualized, but it is far more efficient for a cleric to use alchemy and their own two hands to do healings than waste their energy on things that can be dealt with mundanely. I will write in the lore that patients will be tired after healings, especially flesh wounds where they lost blood. I'm conflicted with making priest healing magic cause pain. It would make clerical healing far more... Gruesome. What I was trying to do with this lore was make priest healers into the sort of classic DnD priestly cleric, who, at the height of their power, is a miracle worker. That's why I wanted the higher-tier spells to be best done with multiple clerics, and require chants and rituals and such. The painful healing is more down-to-earth, and the warm banisher-of-injuries type healing is more high-fantasy, something I've always appreciated and wanted for the server. Both have decent pros and cons, and change the general theme of clerics. Painful healing would certainly make the magic more unique; I loved Drone's Aengul lore, where the Aengul's clerics would feel the pain of their patient's injuries when healing. Having painful healing would also make the sedation spell have use - you have to sedate your patient before working on them so they don't feel whatever level of pain they'd have. I dunno. I like both low-fantasy clerical healing and high-fantasy clerical healing equally. I'm going to confer with other clerics and people to see what their opinions on it are.

Well... Not really... That's why clinics and such exist. There are only around 10 active clerics who can do big healings, and even that's probably an overestimate. You're bound to find a local, non-magical clinic in any given city, which does indeed receive RP. This isn't the place to argue it, I just want to dispel the belief that there is an army of healer clerics waltzing around the realm and that mundane healing RP is nonexistant. We're really quite few. There's a reason people questioned if clerics are even doing anything. The only time we happen to override mundane healing is when we're in the same area, which isn't too often.

You make an excellent point. I don't want clerics to trespass on the RP of alchemists (and playable monks too). If clerics can regenerate, the only reason to go to them is for lost arms and stuff, which people go to Druids and runesmiths and the people who make those metal hands anyways. I'll write out regeneration for clerics. As much as I disagree that it's just popping a band-aid on, I will agree that our power is strong enough as is. I'll get rid of regeneration of extremities; small amounts of cartilage, flesh, and bone is all we can do.

Thanks for formalizing this aspect of clerical magic! Nice lore, very well written. I'll just point out that there are many reasons healers do not want to be clerics and paladins. They don't want to bind their soul to an Aengudaemon and lose the ability to learn any other magic, for example, or simply aren't very religious. Priest healing also doesn't remove or invalidate mundane healing in any way. It's far more common to see a doctor around than a cleric, and they do get a lot of RP; it's just when a cleric is around, or when people can call on the cleric, they'll rely on them because they can deal with an injury better than a doctor can.

I didn't say the eye wasn't complex. I said other extremities were as complex as eyes, if not moreso, such as noses and ears ("eyes are no more complex than other extremities, such as noses and tongues (which, arguably, are more complex"). I definitely understand that eyes are very complex, but we're able to restore deafness when an ear is like this: When we're able to heal noses when they have millions of molecule receptors for scent? When we're able to heal fingers, despite, again, having no knowledge of nerves? I dunno, seems a little weird that eyes would be singled out here. The body is a wonderfully complex thing, all of it is, and eyes are only one of several incredibly complex things clerics are already allowed to heal. I definitely understand that aspect of healing eyes, hence why I said it would only be able to be done within the Elven week of the injury, but you cannot argue that regenerating part of an eye that got burned away from acid is simple, but regenerating the entire eye is too complex for clerics. It is still restoring the eye to its natural state, except you have to go off of the base of the eye socket rather than whatever is left of the eye. I am also not throwing a fit at all. This is a minecraft roleplay server, I ain't gonna throw a fit over that. I just want to be able to do these sorts of healings because I enjoy healing RP and I don't see any reason why eyes are a red zone for clerics. So, yes, I do feel a bit insulted you don't see it as someone who disagrees with you and wants to argue for their position, and instead see it as me "throwing a fit." That's a rather harsh term for debate. Not everybody agrees on things, hence why the lore was written in the first place (because clerics could agree on barely anything, such as eye regrowth, and if they did were lax in informing the rest of the clerics). I was taught by many different people, but it honestly doesn't matter who I was taught by. I'm arguing for clerics being able to heal eyes, which I don't see why it's such a problematic thing if we can, and thus far nobody has provided a legitimate argument, or addressed many of mine, to say otherwise other than "You just can't." Besides, even though the clerics were apparently not legally able to before I wrote this, this lore is changing more than just that, and far more controversial things than a healing spell that, if accepted, would require IC years of study and multiple clerics to do properly. How about we call it a lore proposal rather than something some clerics thought we could do and weren't told otherwise? Does that sound more appropriate?

I'm not sure if you if you missed the introduction in the beginning of the post, but this is my lore. It deviates from Dandan's and Hosper's interpetations of the lore in many aspects, such as my proposal to have war clerics be able to connect war clerics provided they know the ritual (because the Itharel going inactive killed war cleric magic). So treat this lore as any other lore, without any previous established restrictions lorewise for the clerics (because this is actually the first published lore for the clerics), and this lore includes the ability for very experienced priest healers being able to heal eyes. Also, there is no published, accepted magic that Dandan owns. Clerics were just given the go-ahead by LT, but this is the first concrete establishment of abilities that lacks ambiguities or inconsistencies and can be relied upon better than multiple people who all have different interpretations of clerical abilities. Now, from my understanding, there are three concerns for priest healers being able to heal eyes: the complexity of eyes, the difficulty/impossibility of studying eyes properly with medieval tools, and how "magicing" into existence an eye is dumb. I'm going to go through these one by one and prove why they are illegitimate concerns. 1) Eyes are very complex. Regenerating them is impossible because clerics can't understand it fully. As I said before, eyes are no more complex than other extremities, such as noses and tongues (which, arguably, are more complex). We are also somehow able to heal blindness, despite the eye being "too complex." Heck, even Xan paladins can heal blindness. If the eye is truly too complex, then remove anybody being able to heal blindness of any sort. Also remove healing of organs, because chemical processes are complex, and regeneration of/operation on extremities because they're too, if not more, complex. 2) Eyes are too complex for proper study with medieval tools. This one is just a poor argument. Everything in the body can't be studied properly with medieval tools, but clerics are still able to heal them. Clerics, and really anybody in this server, should have no concept of nerves, biochemistry, molecules, and cells. So, really, the body can't be properly studied with tools to have effective healings with clerical magic. A part of it is the natural ability for the light to heal, the cleric just has to focus on what goal he is trying to accomplish when healing. The light takes care of the more complicated, cellular/molecular stuff. You can get enough knowledge on lenses in the eye through dissection and study of anatomy. You don't need to know how nerves hook up, you just need to understand how an eye is supposed to look and work and see. 3) "Magicing" away the problem is dumb and this spell isn't possible with cleric magic. Well... Not sure how to address this one. Seems like an opinion on healing magic rather than clerical ability. Playable monks shouldn't be a thing if you truly believe this. It's definitely in the realm of clerical abilities, though, because A) there isn't much tissue to regenerate (no more than a curled-up finger, which we can already regenerate under Dandan interpretation of magic), and B) clerics can study eyes, as I just established. Also, it won't be "magicing the problem away". A cleric cannot do this spell alone until after a year of being a priest healer and with multiple years of constant study of eyes, and there will be prayer and lots of ritual things. Heck, we might even have to do multiple sessions to get the eye perfect. We're here to provide roleplay for the injured, we're not an NPC that you come to after your big boss battle and wave our hands and boom, healed. If there are clerics doing such, talk to me or them and offer suggestions for their RP. If there are any inconsistencies with this rationale, let me know. But I really, really see no problem with clerics being able to heal eyes.

Attaching a new eye makes less sense to me. I've heard of this method and had it suggested to me (my character lost his eye in Anthos), but that's essentially creating a Frankenstein-esque character using other body parts. Could I attach a used hand? A used arm? Clerical healing is using magic to revert the body back to how it was prior to the injury; the body did not have this new eye or limb, so how would that fit in with clerical magic? I don't see the problem with clerics not being able to regenerate it. I'm an advocate of it being extremely difficult, taking multiple healers to make a properly working one, but rendering it impossible is silly considering we can do so much else that is far more complex than a very small piece of your body. Why should healing organs and regenerating ears and working noses and tongues be possible, but not regenerating an eye? Noses and tongues are arguably even MORE complex than an eye; as I said, scent can't be studied at all, and tastebuds are quite a large amount. It doesn't matter how difficult it is to obtain the ingredients. There's nothing inherently magical about it, its just combining ingredients in a certain way, no? Why should that grow an eye, but not the healing power of an Aengul? I concede the point on the monks.

Why is it we are able to heal ears when we shouldn't have an understanding of ear drums, or noses when we shouldn't understand how scent works (we still don't, have a couple theories but there's no concrete understanding of how smelling works), or a tongue when... tastebuds? Why is it we can regenerate fingers or toes when we should have no concept of nerves? Why is it we can fix organs and know how they should properly work when we have no way of knowing the chemical processes that occur within? Why is it we can fix patches of flesh and veins and such when we have no way of studying veins at medieval science? Why is it we can really heal anything properly as priest healers when pretty much everything we magic back to normal requires x-rays and MRIs and stuff to properly understand? At a certain point, Tsuyose, you need to simply accept that this is magic. We need a good understanding, but the amount of understanding we need can be gained by dissecting eyes and examining corpses' eye sockets and studying how it all fits together and reading anatomy books. It's ridiculous to single out eyes of all things, when pretty much everything in Priest Healing should be impossible by the rationale that we have no way of studying it with current technology. And honestly, I fail to see how preventing us from regenerating eyes even with our current limitations (can't regenerate it after one Elven week) is a good thing at all. All it does is stagnate roleplay. Person loses an eye, they go to a cleric for help, and cleric says... Can't do it? Rely on the monks? Player will either accept the lack of eyes, or, as is permissible and apparently happens quite frequently to people who lose limbs and eyes when they didn't want to, just say a Monk healed it. It may seem dramatic to say removing this aspect of our magic kills RP, but it does, because eyes are surprisingly very difficult to keep a hold of in the LOTC universe. Or, even worse, they go to an alchemist for a potion to heal it. A bunch of herbs and nasty fleshy ingredients boiled together in a pot can regrow limbs and divine power can't even heal an eye? Come on, Tsu, that just seems a little unreasonable, if not downright silly.

"2 ingots, and I can retrieve them. I haven't a home." is the response. A response arrives shortly after: I should very much like to have your assistance in crafting this staff, but I am unsure of what you ask for payment. If you mean literal children, then I am not interested in doing business with you. If you mean a sapling, a child of trees, then I can give you that. - Heshakomeu Sohae

I understand your rationale, but I am going to keep the tiers. Clerics have been referencing our power in tiers to properly conceptualize clerical abilities at given times in their power progression, and it would be way too much work to adjust our lingo and the way we reference our powers. I know everybody hates tiers, but gotta categorize powers somehow, and all the cool magics are doing it. Titles such as those are present in the dozen or so guilds that have existed for clerics, too, so that would mix things up quite a bit. I'd prefer for this post to be magic-related only, and not mention ranks. I'll leave that to IC organizations.

I know you want to keep anonymity concerning the Aengul, but Aenguls usually introduce themselves to their followers, or at least make them aware there is a presence. Stealing - or just sort of leeching off - other Aengul's power is not a terribly unreasonable thing for an Aengul to do, but introduce this Aengul, give these guys culture and life and purpose instead of being just self-serving edgy psuedo-clerics. Name the Aengul, name the Prophet, give them their doctrines or whatever. Other than that, as I'm sure I've told you, I like the magic a lot and it will lead to some swell RP.

Alrighty, so I have updated the lore to include an expanded conceptual explanation of blessing and warding, edited some spelling and grammar and reworded a couple things, and added in gauges for how war cleric light would affect unholy beings at given tiers. Any more comments, critiques, or concerns on the lore? If not, I think this is ready for review.