frill

Ide Haraccus sharpens his quill, preparing to write a letter pledging legal support for the trial should it ever occur!

If both parties refused to work together before, during or after a conflict arises then they’re throwing their right to cry about rule-lawyer or mala fides pvp clicks into the flames. The onus is meant to be on both parties to create the atmosphere, and if one is acting so aggrieved in so far as wanting to lawyer and manipulate the rules in place to protect them to be a weapon against the other party, that needs to be nipped in the bud by whichever staff-member is handling the tickets instead of being enabled by them. There should be no incentive for leaders to press for agreeable terms; the purpose of the OOC discussion is to define a via media in which both parties would want to step into conflict, and these terms need to be reached without any carrot-stick artifice beyond having something fun to rp. The spirit of direct conquest and RP bulldozing still remains, as we’ve seen in all of the previous wars that have crept up since the reveal of the new wars, and it’s a spirit that means that there is no room for negotiation between either party because they see no “roleplay reason” to move the terms, consequences et al. into a situation where the conflict would be seen as an enjoyable mutual enterprise for the people behind the screen. When people’re threatening to void wars because the victim-group don’t consent to full, unabated, steamrolling, PRO-losing conquest, there’s a clear lack of “let’s just have fun roleplaying this out” from anyone involved. The rule-sets are for people who take pretend knight roleplay less seriously, and can flit through IC logic with a wink knowing that they’re not causing an OOC conflict by starting an IC one. With the factionalism and unabated vitriol that people throw at each-other at the national level, it’s very hard to get this subtle smudging of role-play circumstances to keep people enjoying things on both sides. Instead, you have people mobbing Nation Leaders in hour-long discord calls where they state that they demand to have absolute OOC control of a settlement so it’s no longer a “threat in roleplay”, and that it’s either handing over the keys OOC or being bulldozed. The system is idealised, and would work well, for a different set of people. The staff and players are relatively incapable of following the new rules if an issue comes up every three days from a rule-set that is meant to fuel mutual, respectful conflict for the sake of jus’ fun RP :3c and prevent conquest bulldozing of entire nations.

“too right. you tell em tunkrak” Big Al Baden declares aloud as he reads the news in the Elven newspaper delivered to his door! He makes a scribbled note in his pidgeon-scratch handwriting on the paper’s masthead to the post-boy, who’d obviously delivered his copy of Arcas Futbol Daily to some poor Elf in a paper mix-up that would be found comedic by a man possessing less refined tastes than the glorious game.

Big Al Baden stares to the rolling mud-plains where the mysteriously disappearing Barony had stood until a saint's day prior, one of the few remaining pints of Brannby pale ale in his hand. He waves the missive to a peasant rollicking in the raked field of muck and packed clod dirt where the town had once, days prior, proudly stood. "Aye pal, d'you know what tae **** they're invading?" Is his lone cry to the dirty-soaked reprobate.

tbh as most of the abuses of the system were from your blacklisting of players id like to thank you for helping stall the staff teams decline by resigning from it cheers.

O poor Prince Myshkin, at least you tried. The implied sanctity of this backdoor agreement formed the backbone of your system because you deemed the new system to be less about OOC malice and conquest and more about creating and writing cohesive roleplay stories as a wholly cooperative effort of storymaking between all parties involved. The staff being hands-off would be a boon to the avenues of roleplay and story that could be explored and give players welcome relief from staff they deemed too totalitarian in applying rules verbatim when broken. It would give the staff more room to work on other facets of the server while also giving players some welcome freedom - and hopefully, earn back some of the respect that you feel the players no longer held in the staff. By their own admission, staff interventionalism continued to exist even when you created a system to allow roleplay to continue autonomously, and the staff continued to nanny roleplay and have an overarching presence in conflict. Further, the rules further meaning to give players this welcome power to adjudicate their own roleplay conflicts acted as the cudgel they were beaten with as staff liberally applied the punishment system to situations that were agreed on and approved by the players and the players alone. The key to sincere and enjoyable roleplay really is in the backstage wink and handshake, but you need to respect that mutual agreement as existing. The staff should not strong-arm their will past this agreement if the agreement exists, otherwise you're admitting that the players do not deserve the right to self-govern conflicts and that the staff presence is still a necessity with your new system. Maybe you should have your staff team read the rules you wrote, buddy. It's a good system but it isn't quite there yet.

SCRIPTA MANENT Imagined Emperors of Oren. OR; A Chronicle on the Strife and Dissension within the united Empire. As so orated by Ide Haraccus I from the Southern Isle, who in fear of death at the hands of the Orenian government did author this work. *** I ask: what did rapidly subvert and transform the powerful empire into the rump-state and sovereigns? Certainly the indignation of God will be provoked by multiple injustices against Him. I have seen during my time numerous men meddling with the sanctified offices of the princedom and the empire and rashly setting them upon their shoulders beyond their God-given right. I have seen others of my own nation consign my own books of the laws to the flames and are not afraid to tear them apart if the laws or canon-scrolls fall into their hands. During the time of Emperor Augustus the Imperial laws were ordered from the empire and all the men of his realm bound by them, the letter of these laws by the appointment of God and the sanctification of the Canon, the law was rendered all the stronger in its virtue by those who in their sedition endeavoured to impair it. There has been little stability since these days of unity of man and man, man and God, common and noble. Each conflicted debases the next. The apex of this disunity and the fulcrum of the swinging blades of conflicts that had plagued humanity since the war of the two emperors was within the palais Helena itself; for the blood of Oren, Carrion and Sarkoz took to arms against each-other, swords drawn towards oath-sworn brothers and comrades, to reach for the crown of Boy-Emperor Johannes as it dropped from his grasp. Who among the many thousands desiring to rule wishes to be like poor Johannes Achilles Cascadia? Who wished the law and the will of the masses to be dominant democratically, as per the Vessian tradition, over himself and the people? Yet all men who sieged upon Helena ought to have been satisfied with that which Emperor Johannes sought for his people, that is, if he acquired for himself only a few bare coins from the booty. For if these usurping men of Sarkoz and Tiber and Carrion blood took care to order those things which the law declared, the people would acquiesce in obeying to any of them so readily that there would not be iniquity and dispute in the community; and the emperor ought certainly to satisfy the people of his emperor. This wishful equity would never be reached by the choosing of a new emperor as among his newly appearing subjects, if but only due to the clawing proclivities of those of feudal stock. But what of these men of feudal stock? Those craven beasts of capricious blood who grip and grip again at the station of political office are exactly those good men of governance should seek to dismiss. The depth of their fidelity and faith is as thin and lipid as the water of the wombs they so blasphemously defiliate themselves from. Their own surreptitious deposing of the rightful king of Helena is the case in point of their blasphemous sedition if but only by being an example of only enforcing the will of the emperor when it can so benefit themselves; and to the loss of good Tiber, his divine right to kingship as proclaimed by the emperor provided no such boon. Godspeed you imagined politicians, you privy council of phantoms. Let your confederacy of nobodies be as strong as it is ambiguous. Let this stranger’s gallery of previously unseen courtiers who so represent nothing of the people of Oren try to twist the limbs of their boy-emperor puppet into some semblance of public spirit, for an emperor who is not serving of his people - as only a man chosen by them could be - is but a crowned ass. GOD RESTORE TIBERIUS Ide Haraccus I, Serene Prince of Ves, Jurist of Law Imperial and Foreign, paterfamilias of the Rassidun, man of letters.

Haraccus seems to take the missive as a joke as he reads the name of imperial bastard John Arkent, letting out a wheezy chuckle at such a good punchline.

“The very praxis of my written words. What beauty.” A fire-side Prince-Exile Ide Haraccus mumbles to himself as he scans the missive, eventually curling the papers into a ball and tossing the god-be-damned document into the flames.

It’s very telling that the administrators would rather silence dissent rather than address, assuage or hopefully resolve any problems put forward by the community. This isn’t some political diplomatic skill that should needs to be trained into them, but a basic social skill that is expected of the players – hence why it is a really sad thing to see when acted by the administrative team overseeing them. Forced silencing doesn’t beget silence nor fix the issues that’re raised, it just means the administrators, moderators et al. don’t have to see the problems that they need to address. It can only be expected that this issue will continue to be brought forward in the future; if not by the people who’re effectively shadow-banned through the posting-throttle of the forum content moderation system or newer faces being pushed back by an ineffectual staff team that refuse to engage with, and in some cases actively punish, members of the community when problems are publicly brought against them. godspeed mr h and free med

Ide Haraccus paces the streets of Helena with his chest puffed with pride in his fellow man! Truly the emperor-groom he so humbly talked with mere hours before coronation is beginning the first fledgling steps of an age of unity and peace among men.

With the news of Helton’s shaky grip of democratic process finally falling loose being couriered to the farthest reaches of the world, a Rassidun political snake-charmer who had fled the city foreseeing the vipers beginning to nip at the hand that fed them soon began to work studious quill to vellum. The man’s brow furrowed as he tries to remember some endearing Illatian phrases of supplication as he jots down the scrawled Renatian address from the cover sheet of the stacked reeves of a years-old property-lawsuit. Pausing mid-word, he rises to his feet with a sudden exhale, making foot to ground as he begins to trek back to civilisation. “-and Ave Adria, then.”

Well, what’s your name? “Ide Haraccus." Aye. And from whence do you hail? “The Far South." Alright, alright, that’s a fine place this time of season. How many years have you lived? “Forty.. forty something." Got it. Your ethnicity, good man? I can’t make it out. “One of those far-folk." Mmm. I never would have expected it. Are you literate? “I would like to say so." Good, that won’t hurt you. Do you have a wife at home, or children? “My fiancée had passed over a year ago now. No bastards sired." They call Sixtus the Third ‘the Lewd’ for having two bastards. Don’t be like him. Have you got anything against taking oaths? “No. Nothing against them. I would prefer something cloistered." You’re all set. I’ll have this filed away to the Prelate at once. He’s a sleepy cardinal, about to hit his centennial. Give him a few days.