hearth_

In some far corner of the world, nestled in the roots of a maple tree, a pile of armor sat motionless. Its wearer had been limp for too many days to count, a slick of loam that ran off from the trunk painted across the plate. It was peaceful there. A place cradled still by the Aspects. A hospice for their broken servants. The melody of the Song was enough to lull even the fiercest of faith into trance - until it was shattered. A shrieking tore through the darkness. A Mother’s grief. A Father’s fury. A Grandmother’s loss after all too many. The heap of metal jolted, senses bleeding back into the present only to be mercilessly stretched thin. The Druid had heard this agonized chorus only once before. Who. The word rang once through the hollow of their skull. WHO. Again. A thundering drum that spurned rust from neglected joints. White light that had pooled behind their eyes - the gentle, drifting thing that had shown them soft and still - flickered, guttered, and was swallowed whole by a fury of amber. The Lord wrought themselves from the shadowed mulch. The Harvest would begin again.

sure would be nice to hear from our tech admin @Daisyin these trying times edited to say thank you for your contributions to the server while you were on staff. it was nice to see someone doing as much as they could in their position to make a difference.

Undoing a horrible mistake and appointing someone to a position they've held in the eyes of players for months now isn't a new chapter.

If your actual career keeps you too busy to stay in touch with your teams, let alone the community, what's the point in having you in this position of power? The only time I hear about you posting is when the community has a new thing to laugh at. Give up.

For the love of God can't the server have consequences, just for once? EoM got to where they are without staff intervention (idfc about conspiracies), they shouldn't be removed or hindered by it now. I'm not even in the EoM playerbase and anytime I hear people wanting staff to 'do something' it makes me cringe. Sore loser types.

god i wish i could spend another 500 us dollars on a minecraft server. where's the vip rank with pex???

Dedicancy is so freeform anyways it's barely a meaningful method of gatekeeping the magic, which shouldn't be happening to begin with. It deters new players from following through because it takes way, way too much to get in. Having to rely on someone to give you little cultural lessons when they're only available for 1 day out of the week for 30 minutes is nonsense. Also, why are cultural norms being enforced through redlines? Seems needlessly limiting. +1

Will we be able to edit the names/descriptions of these items without losing their effects? That would let us keep the ability to have a more specific creation process IRP for the soupmancy crowd.

The Harvest Druid was quick to find his Dedicant's writings. Though their tones were dichotomous - his own a chattering bark, hers a gentle Harmony - the sentiment was shared. He folded the parchment together again and slipped it into the front page of a freshly bound journal already teeming with the writings of friends, kin, and those Worthy of the Gifts. With a broadening, prideful smile he murmured, "So mote it be. Ahernal Ito."

SEVERANCE [!] These missives have since been taken down, but remain in the hands of whoever might’ve collected the originals.

this sounds like cool flavor in theory, but i feel like we'd need to work on our creation story to accommodate such notable differences in biology between the subraces. also, as someone who plays an elf of mixed heritage, would i have access to the aesthetics of all subraces he's a part of, or only the most dominant? just seems like this could both narrow RP and simultaneously make elves into a mess of nonspecific 'magic people'. with some more story justification and clarity i could get behind this, but not as it stands.

In the wake of his writings, The Harvest Druid stood alone atop the Elder Tree of the Mother Circle. When an errant breeze caused the branches that held him to rustle, a dour breath left long through his nose. The Marshlands of Jun-Mura had been a welcome home to he and his kin - yet he knew well the tyranny of the Shugonate. The consequences that would follow him. He went with the wind, and hasn’t been seen since.

[!] Across all roads there was a missive starkly displayed - a large stretch of canvas with bold lettering, meant to catch the attention of any passerby. TO MY KIN AND FELLOW SERVANTS OF THE ASPECTS: I pen this missive with a hesitance and ire I struggle to put into words. As many now know, Iryalen was forced to yield territory to the Empire at threat of the Shugonate’s blades. This does not concern me. It shouldn’t concern any of us. By making politics our business, a profession once condemned and forbidden by our Order, we have sown only chaos, and ensured only bloodshed for our people. Read this and know - I bore witness to these events. I participated in the raid on the home of the ‘ame. And it disgusts me. Let all be aware that Kato Ichika is the Druid responsible for this foolish endeavor. What lives were made to waste in the aftermath is her burden to shoulder. Her ceaseless involvement and prioritization of her State has led to nothing short of a failure to Serve truly. Her demands were well intentioned - the Unattunement of Draoi, the purging of a festering wound in our culture. But to her I would ask, besides making the Druii of the Mother Circle and those otherwise unaffiliated into lapdogs for the Shugonate and the Empire - what exactly was accomplished? Every wretch named doesn’t feel a sudden compulsion to throw themselves to the judgement of the Aspects. They will not be motivated by the State she worships. She has done nothing but give them warning. Ample time to disappear into the wilderness before reckoning may be delivered. And do not be mistaken, their absence will be impermanent. They will bide their time until they peek from their dens and see a people broken and powerless. Their corruption will be born anew, and their illness of mind spread under the guise of ‘philosophy’. I will not bleed for someone so plagued by arrogance and short-sightedness again. I will not see my people weaponized. Lady Kato’s actions have betrayed our order. Her poor scheming has led to further calamity in our reputation. May she be shunned.

Incredible work. Issue of Yeu being dead aside, this is an engaging concept I'd really love to have the chance to encounter and I think it's time we bring in another deific magic. Hope it passes with revisions to the Aengul.

After talking more to people in the community, I've decided to make one more major edit while the piece is pre-review status. Emote count has been reduced to match the techlock for shortbows. Red Lines added to the 'Usage' section to accommodate emote reduction change. Red Lines added to describe shortbow/longbow switching functionality. Red Lines surrounding character height were removed, along with precise measurements for the bow. Changed Munition signature requirement to ST approved for Crone's Cackle. Red Lines for Crone's Cackle reworked to be more specific.

Fair enough, this comes from a lack of full familiarity with Azdrazi lore on my end. I can fix it, thank you! The issue is that the current write for Woadbows should not function under our lore in Communion & Control. I would be better off adding back the shortbow/longbow functionality to this piece instead. I don't see how being able to break out of them in two emotes is 'indefinite'. I reduced the emote count from the Ensnare spell described in the Communion & Control post - just trying to follow standards where they exist. This doesn't make sense to me, personally. Why would it be during the process that a plant is growing into your flesh that it's easier to concentrate on casting than when it's taken root and stopped moving, at least? I guess, in my mind, tendrils spreading throughout the muscle would require surgery to be removed, and since it's dead plant matter, it just can't be the subject of Ungrowth. It's made at a reduced batch cost (which I know you disagree with), but I think you're leaving out the fact that any of these Munitions require us to be completely unable to use our magic for an entire day. That includes using woadbows. It'd be disabling ourselves from anything but mundane fighting for that entire period of time. On the topic of batches, I guess I struggle to understand what you'd propose as a fix. If I can produce three of any ammo type, then I could produce three of this admittedly potent munition every single time. Then you're bloating its production rate in comparison to the others. I thought, personally, that it's pretty fair to have to simply walk three blocks in one direction to resume casting. Potions already produce this effect at a lower emote cost. This is just a fair, honestly. I may make one more edit, because this was something added in last minute. That's why it can still function as a longbow. It feels like you have the idea of it being utterly useless and absolutely broken at the same time. There were a lot of points throughout your reply that you made the point that I was "hand-waving" certain things. The truth of it is that I don't feel like over-complicating a magical invention by defining what "significant disadvantage" precisely means, or "having your sight hindered". It's tear gas. I can't say how that's going to effect every single CA on the server, and I don't feel like I'm the one who should have to make that call. That could be a bad mentality to have, though, I'll admit. I do really appreciate your feedback though, you raised a lot of good points that hadn't been made to me before posting. This is my first lore submission so I'll be more critical of things in the future. (:

My defense remains that a longbow has a hard unit of measurement and isn't a term relative to the character's height. Since this rewrite doesn't change the power of the shot itself, it didn't seem appropriate to let characters have something they physically could not fire. To be very clear, I'm not the biggest fan of it myself, but I didn't want to simultaneously give us bows of longbow power at any size in addition to Munitions. If that's something ST thinks is possible, I would love to amend that part of the piece. The current iteration only lets us switch it into having longbow penetration/range at a total of [4] emotes. This isn't meant to be overpowered by any means, and in trying to touch Woadbow lore, I'm dancing with having to appeal to a team that historically denies much of anything making Druids offensive. I also designed these with group fights in mind as that's the situation I most often find Druids in. It's meant to provide more utility for the casting line, not be a primary weapon for mid-range/melee. As with above, I agree with you, but I'm trying to meet the team somewhere in the middle. This was a problem, and so it was rewritten into the (in my opinion) useless state it's in now. I didn't want to try the same thing twice. (thank u for the compliment C:)

In my opinion, if something like a heat/chemical treated wood is kept behind lock and key, and doesn't require ST signature, then an invention to this degree of functionality should certainly be behind a similar barrier. The intention is to still let it be spread with relative ease, without it being a magically innate understanding. I see where you're coming from though!

Edited to clarify charged munitions cannot be gathered on a failed shot. Edited to add Red Line reinforcing description for Crone's Cackle. Edited to add Red Line clarifying what happens if the firing process is interrupted post-priming. Removed: "➳ If an enemy is invisible or obscured, but still corporeal, their forms will become visible in the affected radius. Once they leave it, they return to their previous state of obfuscation. " from Red Lines for Crone's Cackle.

Massive oversight on my part. Did some last minute editing to redlines that dropped it. To be clear: Woadbows require ST signature. Wild Munitions do not. Edited to reflect ST requirements.

it lets us turn a shortbow into a longbow. absolutely stunning.