Luxury

My gripes from the current system carries over to this one. The Cost of Spells should reflect their complexity and/or relative density, while Tiers should remain a learning threshold which reflect when they can be learned. Tiers are ineffective at denoting cost. See the following: An eight-emote Tier Five Tornado and a three-emote single-target Gust of Wind sit at the same mana cost under this system. A spell requiring significantly more sustained effort, focus, and execution time should not cost the same as one resolved in a fraction of the emotes. The numbers need to reflect the actual weight of what's being cast. -- That said, I am foundationally against this numbers based arms race which has plagued magic. I'd only relent to such a system if people start actually talking about stamina systems for Knights (they never will).

Elemental weaknesses are written into a significant number of MAs and FAs, and those weaknesses exist as mechanical facts. The burden of disambiguation will fall on every participant in the encounter to parse what is cosmetic and what is functional in real time, mid-conflict. I do not believe the inclusion of a red-line is going to prevent disputes from arising in game. I.e. an entity with a fire weakness facing a flaming stone projectile has a reasonable expectation that the fire is mechanically relevant. As written, it seems to suggest people metagame, to a degree, what is aesthetic only

It's in a weird spot, but this does exist already. It's ancient lore and could definitely use an update. Arcane tats are not, and have never been exclusive to Voidal Eminence.

The first hours after landing at the lands soon to become Sternfell, rather a more realized Sternfell with buildings and infrastructure, did not undercut Ivy's expectations. The region was untamed, with few places to stop and rest, and sloped... bad for the knees, though Blissfoil ointments did wonders in those stretches she needed to power through. Her traveling companions were spry, eager, and capable. She admired all of these things in equal parts, and had no qualms when a foray into an abandoned mineshaft was initiated. Ivy did not typically partake in adventure, figuring those days had long passed... though she could not say when they had been, exactly, or what they had looked like. The feeling was there, or perhaps the spirit thereof. The mineshaft was not a mineshaft. It unfolded inward, damp and branching, with dusty corridors leading to dustier corridors. Books lined entire stretches of wall, swollen with moisture and mostly illegible. A labyrinth, then, as it might have been described in children's story books. Ivy shuffled along at the rear, one hand trailing the stone, cataloguing the herbs that grew in the cracks by touch alone. Life flourishes even in places light doesn't go. Then, a hulking figure was spotted ahead, and soon another at the flank. It wasn't long before the party was noticed, reinforcements called, and of course aggressed upon. They were massive things, any one of which could have cleaved a man in twain with so much as a single swing of their enormous axes. The corridor became permeated with noise and motion and the sense of impending doom. Ivy tucked into the backlines, knowing her strengths lay elsewhere. What struck her, watching from behind, was the group itself. Human and elf and dwarf, tall and short, fast and steady. Not one of them fought the same way as they moved around each other with a stark fluidity, covering each other's flanks. She thought distantly that this was what Descendantkind looked like at its full unrealized potential. Not despite the differences but because of them. This is Sternfell, she assessed. The minotaurs fell quickly, but not without due injury on the adventuring side, signaling her time to act. The first patient had taken a blow to the skull, which she treated with alacrity, at least to the best of her capacity. Head wounds are treacherous, but not impossible. Beyond the minotaurs, deeper in, they found enslaved laborers; caged or chained or simply too broken to have wandered out on their own. Ivy moved among them with care, finding cuts and lengths of arm that shackles had worn raw... They were starved and dehydrated. She hadn't thought to ask their names, rather, letting her introduction be the alms she shared thereafter. Once the captives received first aid and were sent on, the party carried on. There at the end of it all was a impermeable gate. She stood before it in thought. Gates, beyond their structural significance, represent transitory change. Perhaps this was some sort of foretelling for what was to unfold in these rolling hills... the beginning stage of the Crusades.

- An old Nordic elf began a slow descent toward the southern shores, rattling along in a hired carriage. The driver had not asked questions, which she appreciated. She had given him a fair price and a small jar of something for his aches, which he had accepted without comment. Her bag sat across from her, overfull, smelling strongly of Tippen's and dried lavender. She watched the landscape through the window change from greener to darker, familiar to something else entirely. The word Darkspawn, colloquially known as Grendel, passed through the forefront of her thoughts more often than she liked; but she knew there would be plenty wounded, and that she would most certainly be needed. . .

-~~- Each morning since, Ivy leaves a small herbal cutting on the windowsill. Always in the same spot. When it withers, she would replace it. -~~-

- Ivy shuffled out into the garden one morning, eager to reap the first spring harvest. Turnips, mostly, and a row of Kale that had survived the frost. In her work, a blur of motion caught the corner of her eye. Her gaze panned the garden slowly, arriving just after the moment, never quite able to catch up until one fleeting instance. There it was, a hummingbird in the herb garden, hovering amidst the rosemary. Then the lavender. Then the chamomile, spurred on by wings that blurred with their speed, the tiny iridescent body suspended at the center of all that motion. She took to calling it Pip, thinking the short sounding name captured it's nature. Some special days she handfed it, her arthritic hand held flat and very still, and felt something she did not yet have a word for. A warmth, or a presence; the sense of something occupying space beyond its physical size. Like how a candle fills a room with more than just light. She thought, distantly, that this was probably what the tome meant. - The following cycle of Winter came and went, and as the first thaw shed its icy sprawl from the crags of Solgaard, Ivy set back into the garden. As the days carried over, she thought she saw Pip from time to time, caught that almost-sound of fast hummingbird wings at the edge of her hearing. But never quite did they meet again. She found it eventually, though this time beneath the rosemary. Feet curled upward the way small things curl when they are finished. There rested her little hummingbird, taken by the frost too soon. She knelt, joints creaking as she did, and touched it once with one crooked finger. Gently, the way she tended wounds at the Healing House. Nothing. Pip's candle was out, she confirmed with a deep sigh. She brought it inside and set it beside the tome, and thumbed to a particular passage. As she read it over, her finger pressed on the word life for a long time. She was not certain what she would do, or if she could do anything at all. Only that Pip's time had not yet come. . .

Redquill’s former Headmistress quietly applauds the Reinhold lineage for continuing to preserve academia in Petra.

Much cleaner than the first draft. Ive mentioned this to you before but I did just want to echo it here; requiring obelisks/voidal objects for connection doesn’t make sense when mages predate these inventions. How did the first mages connect? This was a missed opportunity to fix that logical gap, though I won’t die on this hill.

Mages go in the mage area, druids in the druid area, shamans in the shaman area. It's basic geometry.

Not what I was referring to my fellow roleplayer! 2nd mind purge is cool tho

whichever one people were abusing the vague lines in to purge folks of Void connection

You’re not alone in that sentiment, Bones. These kinds of scenarios aren’t new, and they’ve persisted for years. I think a large part of that comes down to how difficult this issue is to rule cleanly. The moment we try to draw hard lines, we risk creating a system that becomes unwieldy and actively obstructive to roleplay rather than supportive of it. At some point, the core problem isn’t the absence of rules, but a loss of trust in the integrity of fellow roleplayers. As abstract and uncomfortable as it is, reinforcing expectations of good faith may be the only real way forward. Though I question the value of simply stating something airy in the CRP rules section... the real work is shifting the server culture, which starts with all of us.

This is tangibly better than Veilwatching, but I still find myself wanting more. It feels like we’re iterating on the same ocular-focused design rather than exploring what Veil interaction could actually be. What I’d really like to see is a feat that approaches the Veil as something you engage with, not just perceive through. Since I don’t foresee LOTC supporting two explicitly Veil-flavored feats, this becomes our only shot at getting it right.

Ignoring the formatting, I think there is a hunger for more supplementary objects in mage roleplay that actually provide something other than aesthetic. The Orb, while traditionally found in a witch or mystic's repertoire, has been coopted more modernly by Wizards and ascended to a bread-and-butter type instrument. In that breadth, I think they should have a more general 'primary' application that can seed easier into most player's wizard rp. Not everyone gets into the prophetic posts, and moreover they are somewhat sparse. You've included other applications here as almost an afterthought, but I think you'd find more success with this if you either brought those secondary abilities to the forefront or made the modus operandi for Orbs MORE tied to pondering / mental focus or acuity / inward seeking. That said, I wouldn't immediately throw out prophetic access from the mix - but I do expect that it would have to be more gated than an open invention.

By the time the missive was published, the former Primarch was carriage-bound out of the Crownlands. A rough draft was taken, along with her personal effects: stacks of research scrawled over parchment, experimental enchantments, her favorite whiskey. . . The carriage sped along, rocking over an uneven road. Rhae'lin set aside the travel case containing more sensitive documentation and pulled the draft from her satchel. The dissolution decree had been necessary, though she spared a few reflective moments for the faces she'd come to know during her tenure. Not a single soul expected the College to last - the very first conversation she shared with the Liason, grim as it were, played on repeat in her mind; ". . .We are tolerated now, but there is no guarantee that the descendants of the Crown will maintain such favor." She was too keenly aware of the aging Tiberias I, and his oncoming lineage which would gain his mantle. The Imperial College of Magic was fated to fall from the onset, certainly, but she knew better than to choose complacency. The sorceress always seemed to know better, born of a lineage that always knew better. Held themselves high above the common rabble. And so in their wake she endeavored to uphold Arcane practice, but under Imperial authority - requiring a balance which could never truly be struck. At least not without strong liquor, compartmentalization bordering on insanity, and the slow erosion of oneself in the process. While she could be lauded an expert at this level of façade, it was perhaps too cruel to expect of her colleagues. Through the carriage window, the Crownlands receded behind her. This had become a familiar pattern; Convenient evidence, theological justification, decisive intervention, total destruction. The recent incident merely compressed the timeline. In any case, these events always served to remind where Home was - where she was soon to return to.

Come rp in an Elf Mage lineage. Lotc on Hard Mode. Disc is _luxury

I feel if you apply any build to a collaborative roleplay environment, there is implied expectations for that build to be used and / or interacted with in the roleplay narrative. Sometimes that means it gets taken, damaged, improved, or otherwise. It's a dynamic world.

Frost Witches 2

[ ! ] A flier.

[!] Another missive is pinned, where appropriate access warrants it. . . penned on fine parchment in precise script. I have read the exchange between the anonymous antitheist and the Big Hat Society, and pose that each argue from flawed premises. I begin with a simple rebuttal; The Void is not aberrant chaos seeking to unmake ordered reality. It is undifferentiated potential from which order emerges through imposition of Will. Creation and Void are not warring principles, but sequential states in a single process. Consider, then, what occurs during the Voidal Connection. We meditate into formlessness and encounter absolute simplicity. Black. Empty. The Void contains everything and nothing simultaneously, without differentiation. Fire exists there as potential. So does water, stone, every element in superposition. They await Will to collapse possibility into actuality. If the Void opposed Creation, connection would be impossible. Our souls exist within Creation's framework, yet we touch the Void directly, repeatedly, without being unmade. When we cast, we impose structured intent upon this formlessness. Our Will defines manifestation, while Anchors provide framework. Mana Flow sustains it. The eldest theological texts claim this same operation occurred at Creation's genesis; Will shaping Possibility into differentiated reality. We perform it at smaller scale with every evocation. The grammar remains identical. Magic therefore becomes literacy in this fundamental language. The mage perceives reality as structure that can be understood, interfaced with, shaped. While most people experience existence as fixed and immutable, we read the patterns beneath that apparent solidity. This formula is not unique to the Arcane, as it is held by many of the Realm's foremost Natural Philosophers, otherwise notated as Alchemysts. Even still, my framework accounts for observable magical practice. The origin, intentions, and now whereabouts of the first Will capable of imposing such structure remains unresolved. I merely suggest that this dichotomy between chaos and divine order is a false construction. The Void functions as foundational principle. Creation expresses that principle through structured Will. Magic engages with both simultaneously. All the while, the pattern LOGOS cites holds; grand sorcery tends toward catastrophe. Finite beings engaging with infinite principle will fail at predictable intervals. We are small and the Void is vast, but the moralizing about spiritual warfare misses the actual mechanism of failure. Together in the cosmological mysteries, R. T. Ashwood

The Primarch's office sits quiet in the evening hours, with ambient light from enchanted sconces casting warm illumination across dark wood paneling and the rich upholstery of the sofa. Rhae'lin reclines with characteristic composure, one hand holding a cut crystal glass of amber whiskey, the other holding the Society's missive. "Refreshing." she mumbles after a soft exhale "Genuine curiosity does yield better understanding than recitals of doctrine. I can appreciate the Wizards' perspective."

I expected to open this and see an unrelated meme post.

Shelf and regroup. Veilwatching did its rounds, and didn’t work out. When the next magic that revolves around the Veil surfaces, we can expect it to be far more encompassing and interactive than Veilwatching ever was.

The Ashwood Sorceress did not consider her actions heroic. To her this was simply work, executed with the same methodical precision she applied to any operation… Two young humans clung to the cliff face above the valley, their survival dependent on a sustained manifestation of Voidal wind that required neither drama nor flourish. Another threat opposed. Another successful defense of forces targeting her realm. She had been present only by chance, included in the scouting party during a routine visit to Petra to lay flowers at her student’s gravestone. Circumstance, not intention, placed her in position to intervene. But circumstance or not, the work required completion, and so it was completed. She conjured her spellcraft, the humans lived. She moved on to the next task without reflection. This is what competent practitioners do; they solve problems as they arise, with appropriate technique applied at the appropriate moments.