Reece Nolan

It's not even a full submission and it's still more balanced and thought out than the last post that tried to tackle this, which was a voidal connection rewrite.

I don't think there needs to be a downside, that's why it's a CA. Players apply by explaining the lore thoroughly in their own words to demonstrate that they understand how it works, to prevent power gaming. It's not like the average player is going to say "Olog please!" And be handed an unstoppable CA, in-fact, that seems like what they're trying to get rid of. I don't know, I think this rewrite is good, it cleans up an old lore piece, gives it modern formatting and some narrative fluff. Overall a positive change, just has some semantics issues in the wording.

Forgive me, I feel a bit stupid for needing this to be explained further. What would this do to existing CAs that use Ologs as a metric for their strength, like Brutus Golems? If I'm understanding this, Brutus Golems would functionally have the same strength as Mundus Golems in CRP? Should we anticipate a rewrite or amendment being required for each instance of lore that uses "Olog" strength as a metric? Or am I just reading this wrong?

Yeah, I'd say so. "Morally gray" only works from the perspective of in-universe. Take Mysticism for example: Your entire magic hinges off of grafting someone else's soul onto your own, all of your powers involve messing with the dead, and more than half are only made possible by harming others and literally stealing parts of their soul. It doesn't matter if you have good intentions or not, the magic will always be evil by way of it's nature. The same applies to blood magic. I don't know every magic, but the only ones I'd say for sure have the capacity to be morally gray, is Voidal Magics. Because Voidal Magics have the capacity to do evil and catastrophic damage, but it is completely optional, you do not have to open tears to progress through it, you do not have to become a void stalker and let some eldritch entity into your head, you do not have to be evil even though you can. I would say that magics which do not have these kinds of options cannot be morally gray or evil. Like sure, YOU can be an evil templar but I'm pretty sure the majority of your spells are mostly effective against darkspawn and dark magics. YOU can be evil but magics like Housemagery won't be.

There's a time and a place for bones. If you attempt to eat boneless buffalo wings or boneless BBQ wings, you deserve to be on this post. However, I'm not going to shame you if you have say boneless honey garlic wings (a Korean joint near me does them boneless and they're very good). The real freaks here are those who order ******* naked wings with no rub, no sauce, nothing, they get blank wings and then dip them in their dinky little ranch or BBQ sauce cup and eat them like the hunched over cave goblins they are. Also, bleu cheese is better for buffalo than ranch is, fight me.

Balas read over the missive, before neatly folding it up to later return the high quality material to the Justicar rather than wastefully burning it. "Zahir seems tae beh takin' t'ese accusations quite seriousleh. Perhaps et es time oi heeded dah call ov our kingdom's remnants, tae answur on moi whereabouts." He'd say to himself aloud.

Balas reads of the petty squabbling of the High Elves, lacking in entertainment. Truthfully, his was a lonely existence, accompanied only by the presence of phantasmal beings and displaced kin. His gaze trailed off though the window cut into the morion walls of Barad-Khór. Where was Hymnal now? He wondered. What would have become of himself had he confided his religious whiplash in the Urguani therapist? Would he still find himself among the dead and dying? ". . ." He stewed in his thoughts, recalling the odd situation in which the two first met. It disturbed him, how unsteady and treacherous the world was outside of Urguan's rocky bosom; How often he'd heard of friends and acquaintances tortured by their new reality, it sickened him. A pit formed in his stomach, "Bounty er not, p'raps he shoul' die." He mused, turning his attention to an enormous unfinished slayersteel glaive, and the glowing Brutus Core which rest beside it.

I don't think you're a bad person for what you've typed, I'd like to throw that out there, but you are very quick to jump the gun and escalate on matters without getting your ducks in a row. That's how things like Squakhawks reports became a thing. If from anyone, please take it from me and my experience, that the haphazard posting style and self humiliation posts that have been going around, never get anything done and if anything serve to irreversibly damage your reputation, turning yourself into the subject you mentioned in your reply, that people end up not wanting to interact with. You only get so many chances on LOTC before people write you off as just another screamer. Before you hit enter, you need to be absolutely conscious and sure that everything behind that button is factual to the best of your knowledge, gets the point across, and doesn't linger on any pent up personal feelings unless such feelings are the topic of the reply. As for the other nations and who they condone, it's a tough choice. No matter how much RP.is involved, there will always be an OOC factor which decides whether to stay or rebel, to bend the knee or join the other side's defense effort. I imagine many, like Caurost or Krugmar, didn't want to lose their nation status or their place to RP by taking that bet. Urguan did, because we're prideful, our community would rather dissolve itself than be ruled by any Empire of Man or Orenian Empire, because being subjugated by them would be a mark of shame. They have been our mortal enemy time and time again, map after map. We took that choice, and now we have to deal with the consequences (the meaning of that is still loose among staff, which deserves criticism). I don't know anything about dwarves wanting to post gore stuff, at least, it's the first I'm hearing of it, the only one I know is that Jeebus put a shock photo on his exit post. Lotc can get surprisingly dark though, given we have limb dismemberment, mithril crafting in its entirety, surgical RP, body horror, and so on, which I can understand if that's off-putting. I personally offer a FTB when installing golem limbs because of the method of installment, because even though I find it neat I know it has made others squeamish. And LOTC did used to be a far more fucked up place, there's a wealth of absurd stories of players pre-arcas doing some really messed up stuff that I genuinely can't mention here, Id say after Squakhawk became admin things really started to clean up (maybe for the better), LOTC tries nowadays to be more appropriate with it's usage of gore or disturbing content . Stuff like Grogg's escapades or even my first dwarf, Swamp Ass, would never be allowed today. But, your reply also doesn't really address any of the toxicity/wrongdoings listed above. You kinda owe the empire folks an apology, at minimum for negligence.

I hate to have to do this, but, it must be done. The stance on tunneling has been consistent all the way up to the last warclaim against Urguan. The earliest recount I can offer, is that @ryno2had designed the Grudgeforts V2 with tunneling in mind, and not only built his defenses around it (including a hollow core to bait attackers into a kill room when they thought they had a way in), but even went as far as calculating how many trebuchet shots were required to drill into the center of the fort had Oren decided to do so. In the end, they never made it past Eastfleet. Tunneling was also taken into account for the Almaris city building, as was the Aevos rebuild, but with Cpt_Noobman being our primarily builder, our defenses were lacking. The same goes for Azuras, we tried to keep some amount of difference between the surface and the structures inside the mountain, but without a dedicated PvP defenses builder, our build was mostly made for RP and not survivability. The complaint that tunneling is unfair because it's unrealistic, flies in the face of a good 4+ years of fort and city building that kept it in mind. Why do you think Norland looks like someone dumped a ton of concrete on top of a mountain, and layers over itself multiple times, with multiple moats making it impossible to drill one tunnel straight into their city? The main point of unfairness, is that according to the dwarves in moderation discord, someone decided that the dwarves couldn't build defenses on the outside of their mountain because it was "unlikely and unrealistic" that the Empire would drill through the mountain, then reversed their stance after the fact. (I am not in moderation discord, so apologies for the vague posting, I cannot give you a name.) This wouldn't have mattered, because we had no way of taking out their siege camp anyways, regardless of what defenses we would have put up. As far as making warclaims easier for attackers, Cpt_Noobman came up with a clever building trick to make the entire forts out of wall blocks, making the whole thing unladder-able, which in hindsight, was completely unfair and there was no way that was going to get into the war server, even with Josh's ruling. For what it's worth though, moderation ruling on warclaims have always been inconsistent, the very first warclaim I participated in was Myneboar, and after staff somehow permitted the chandelier's existence, made us occupy the city for 4 hours straight to win the warclaim. Slightly pay to win, but also, I have gold VIP and am sitting on 70+ Edit tokens. Pair that with the ability to stack items and bulk edit, and I literally could not use edit tokens faster than I'm getting them unless I went out of my way to be inefficient. You're also making a lot of Mina because you're dominating a market that really doesn't exist at the moment, dwarven smithing. You have barely any competition from your peers and dwarven forged items are in extremely high demand, especially in some parts of Idunia. I don't disagree that high amounts of edit tokens and tons of lines of text gets you more attention, but I'd attribute your success to the fact that you're like one of 3 dwarves actually crafting for profit. This is something I've heard ScreamingDingo actually comment on, which I sort of agree with him on. There's not a lot of dwarves or who just craft or mine, like the Mineplenties, every dwarf tends to try to be a hero or iconic, there's too many Buri "Thrice Devoured"s, or Thorin Oakenshields. I myself am guilty of this too. So you are absolutely in an untapped market. @Two2themisunderstood you saying that you were going to troll, as you saying the dwarves were going to troll on the scale of Unga Bunga again. Which is why he went the way he did, not because of some personal attack on you. However, two2the was particularly grating during the warclaim and was removed for harassing people for not giving up the war, even as far and coming to the gates of Urguan to emote "Urguan? More like smellguan!" Which, is harmless. He's back in the server now by the way. First of all, to spread the rumor that the Empire was calling dwarves pedophiles is outright vile, especially because @Beardicussis right there, you could have asked him. At no point did Werewolf or any Empire player call Beardicuss a pedophile, that was actually the leader of the Snow Elves, Cats(?). And Beardicuss was the only one to be called such, wrongly of course. hopefully these don't look as compressed as they do on my phone. Beardicuss being harassed is not what led to the Warclaim getting reduced, and it wasn't "any number of reasons." The Thursday before the field battle, it was decided during the Iron Assembly that because we were so heavily outnumbered and our only winning chances are in siege defenses, that we would be bringing no equipment to the warclaim. The option to forfeit one battle to move into the next was not on the table, nor was it even known that was an option at the time. This is according to the discussion had post war, @Smolas my witness (though she wasn't involved in such, I just mention she was there for that voice chat and can corroborate what I'm saying). The idea to use caveman skins and fill our inventories with garbage was produced last second. I joined the voice chat 30 minutes before warclaim start, to everyone laughing. I was told there was a caveman skin in the voice text channel, and to put it on and name ourselves some variation of Unga or Bunga. In the square of Urguan, someone had filled a double chest with stone weapons, tools, boats and snowballs. The meme-aspect of the war seemed very last minute and band-wagony (I did jump on the bandwagon, I managed to find some videos to fit with my recording in the 30 minutes I had before we were pulled.) The "any number of reasons" you mention is actually just one, the staff got on multiple hours in advance and set up the war server for everyone, the empire got on multiple hours in advance, rallied and geared up, only for us to not only waste their time with a 4 minute warclaim, but give them garbage instead of gear. The warclaim was treated as though we didn't even show up, and they were reimbursed some of the cost for the inconvenience. That's it, they don't care about the skins, I don't know if you noticed but the last two warclaims had an army of Hatsune Miku, Power Rangers, and Simpsons characters, they care about the entire picture added together, which amounts to blatant trolling/throwing. That said, @Papa Rockdid try to make things fun, again nobody seemed to know that forfeiting part of a Warclaim was an option, he was actually so committed to making sure the dwarves had a good time while being beat over the ass with a belt, that he and a few others wrote an entire post about "Clan Unga" which actually came out okay and is a funny read. In the same manner as you baselessly claiming that the Empire is all calling the dwarves pedophiles, I find it absolutely vile the lengths you've gone to force a correlation between 1940's Germany and the Empire of Man, and I'm genuinely surprised you haven't been reported for it yet. You've even gone as far as to throw around your own grandparents suffering for extra kudos in your Minecraft arguments, and pressed a moderator on being able to say slurs or continue to make such comparison. Let's go over the facts here, a war of conquest to take over the continent of Azuras, offering terms of settlement which are admittedly not in our favor, is not the same as indiscriminately bombing civilian populaces and putting an entire race into concentration camps with torturous conditions. The dwarves, nor the elves nor orcs, were never subjected to that kind of thing. Let's look over the genocides now, there are multiple dwarves living amongst the human nations, Obok even just got a vassal in Kurai Kuni. You've entered multiple human nations for diplomacy and everyone on your boats were not killed, despite the outstanding order to KOS dwarves (mainly those still loyal to Urguan). Pretty odd for a supposed genocide to feature vassalage and diplomacy. The orcs were spared as they bent the knee, and those who didn't were subsequently warclaimed, so the orcs haven't been ethnically cleansed off of the map. The only genocide I can recall that actually fits the definition, that's happened on Azuras, was the Templars massacring the elves of Haelunor indiscriminately after finding that their NL permitted a darkspawn hideout beneath them, and this was near the start of the map, long before @Werew0lfwas even NL. The wizard hat law existed before this Empire of Man, I believe it was even used in Idunia on Aevos, I've seen parallels drawn between it and branding Jewish folk with the Star of David. For starters, the Wizard Hats aren't stapled or branded into the mages scalp, and they aren't thrown into concentration camps either, the entire point of the wizard hat law is to keep track of who is a mage, because some nations are paranoid about mages, especially Voidal mages. Magic is not an immutable quality either, a voidal mage can entirely opt.to just not register themself and never use their magic in the empire, there is no way to forcibly prove someone is a voidal mage either. The difference between sexism and racism and slavery RP being allowed on the server, and what you've been trying to do, is that you're comparing a player and their character to one of the most evil men in history, mostly because you're upset about the circumstances we're all in, and have gone out of your way to slander them and others in the most egregious, disgusting ways possible, while cherry picking details. Mind you, with zero self awareness (Clan Starbreaker is infamous for ethnically cleansing the Ironborn, whereas the dwarves have genocided many a time and done significantly crueler feats. See the entirety of Clan Ireheart, Irongrinder and Starbreaker for those details. We've literally nuked people before.) As for Elrith, it is 100% an anagram. You were repeatedly told to stop, by staff and by your peers in Urguan discord, and have now made an entire wall of text speaking on Behalf of Urguan, evidently consulting nobody, and making a fool of us. Please, show some restraint. - Good morning! Edit Reece here, forgot to mention that the screenshot above are publicly available in Urguan Discord's general-no-mic, and not leaked from any dms.

Yours is a great story, and I'm happy to hear that things eventually worked out for you. I'd like to staple an extra bit of awareness on at the end: If you are transitioning, especially undergoing HRT (regardless of whether or not you are MTF or FTM), please, Please, PLEASE, make sure you have someone to talk to, preferably a therapist. I don't think it's brought up enough just how catastrophic hormonal imbalance can be to the psyche, even in people who aren't Trans, think of what low T does to men, or how menopause affects women. I'd highly encourage all of you to stay vigilant for such symptoms and try your best to remain grounded. Above all, remember, you do not need to go through it alone, your most powerful tool is your voice. If you suspect the way you are feeling doesn't quite line up with reality, or maybe you're feeling down or off and don't know why, talk to someone, anyone.

A dwarf camping in the wilderness reads through the missives and newspapers he had been using for kindling, his eye caught by the Petran Star. "Oh? Oi 'avent seen ah public paper formatted t'is well sence dah Grand Kingdom 'ad ah paper!" He exclaimed, before casting it into the log pile and lighting it.

To say what's being said quietly, what he and the others actually mean when they say the "Consequences of War" is, you are no longer allowed to play an Urguani dwarf. The only dwarves, aside from Sigrun and Obok, that have obtained residency in the Empire through diplomacy are dwarves that have either sworn off Urguan entirely and apologized for their actions/disavowed Ulfar, new dwarf personas with no affiliation or loyalty to Urguan, or dwarf players who have stopped playing dwarves to make a human or elf persona. Their point is that you either abandon Urguan entirely to let "something new rise up" as Morigung said, or you go to CT, purchase an architect, and go live in a corner of the map isolated from RP and try to wait the empire out. You aren't allowed to Lair your way back into the fifth Grand Kingdom. You aren't allowed to settlement your way back into the fifth Grand Kingdom, and unless you can get 40 dwarves all in one nation, you aren't allowed to vassalize your way back into a fifth Grand Kingdom. You will, at best, be an independent dwarf who will see a dwarven nation that is not the Grand Kingdom rise up, or, at worst, be an Empire of Man pet, smithing for them, possibly even made to abandon your culture due to the paganism. I tried to tell you guys this back when Runeheart was denied, it isn't going to work. You are being directly told by both administration and implimentation team, to either adapt, or perish; do something new even if you don't want to do it, or leave the server. Those are your options.

Maybe might hop on this, but I have little experience with human builds. I can replicate people's build styles pretty well tho.

Probably the best take here on the discussion, you and Crevel. These are just re-skinned lairs without the persecution requirements and stinkier war rules. Could definitely use some revisements. I've seen this take a couple times already and every time I see it, it really does seem like nobody can actually tell you what it means. Like the word Woke. The consequences of war are displacement, not exclusivity. Yes, some dwarves are picking themselves up in the empire, I myself have found ways to continue my Character's narrative too. However, for the vast majority of dwarves, it would require an OOC, meta play level break of their character in order to turn their character around and disavow Urguan so that they can join the empire. The problem here isn't some consequences free pass, that's not what a lair or settlement is, they still lose the entire build, their political standing, a lot of their playerbase, resources, reputation, and most importantly, time. The problem here is staffs lack of alternative for racial hubs, because an entire map controlled by one nation/race has only happened a handful of times in LOTCs history. Although I will concede, a lot of the dwarves who aren't in that sticky position have taken this scenario less than gracefully. I've only really seen Dorin, Belegar, Obok, Thriku, Media, and myself, actively searching for an alternative. There are dwarves who aren't legionnaires or nationalists who very well could disseminate into the empire without breaking their character, that are just sitting on their hands waiting for a lair handout. Let's not stoop to Kurai-Kuni's level. No generalizations.

I didn't say you didn't care, I should have clarified that I was moreso speaking on the topic than I was levying anything at you. Apologies Smmr. And I understand where you're coming from, I have quite the tally of people who dislike me as well. If I may speak from experience though, posts like these don't get anything changed. You'll raise awareness for a couple weeks, but overall, nothing short of a Josh level protest or a months-long compiled report, ever gets anything done around here. In fact, there's been a bunch of these self-humiliation ritual posts in the last few months. The best thing you can do is bite your tongue and speak through action/inaction (choosing whether to continue giving the server your continued time, effort and advertisement. Being there for the people you feel are innocent and being sure that they actually are innocent), cruel as it sounds, because Navigator is right, this is a company first. You're effectively screaming into a crowded mall filled with apathetic shoppers and employees.

Mysticism is kind of hard to beat, especially when it entirely operates off of vibes. It's also one of the few that directly interacts with the afterlife, which has serious potential for religious and magical dialogue.

Navigator is carrying the conversation with facts here, but Crevel by far has the best take. An important factor to consider here is that LOTC moderation and administration isn't typically proactive with their handling of CGV or TOS players, at least from what I can tell and from those I've spoken to; These bans are supposedly triggered by one party approaching the staff with their evidence, who then does an investigation after everything has already been said and done. This means the accuser has complete free-reign to cherry pick their evidence to their hearts content and should staff be unable to find any evidence to the contrary, the accused is unable to defend themself and is permanently banned. The reason this is rare, though, is because the types of people who get themselves CGV or TOS banned are rarely smart, they're manipulative, but not smart. I would say that staff are likely working with 1/2 to 2/3rds of the full picture in these kinds of bans, if the players involved weren't constantly committing their heinous acts in ways detectable by Omni or easily screenshot-able, screenshare-able, or record-able inside of a discord chat. What has always been more heinous to me is how long they are able to get away with it, again because this system heavily requires someone to speak up first. This is a weakness of many corporations, but I've never seen it more exploited anywhere else in my life than I have in LOTC.

Re-visiting this, I didn't realize just HOW MANY buffs Amputation has received in this rewrite. Couple that with your changes and the post-submission slot changes, this is actually pretty solid. The fact that it's making me consider choosing between Voidal Feat'ing or Three Slotting Mysticism for the ability to manipulate and hex, means it's very effective. Good stuff.

Lotc has taught me to have a healthier relationship with burnout. Back when I started, I used to force myself to play non-stop for the grind, I would get on even when I didn't want to, because I wanted to spend time with my friends and not-so-much play LOTC. That would lead me to go on 6+ months of burnout and be literally unable to play anything that requires creativity, ranging from LOTC to D&D to Minecraft itself. Just listen to your body, as with most things, it will tell you when it's had enough. Take a break for a couple weeks or a month or two, tend to things in life that need your attention or play other games. Above all, don't force it, and it'll come back to you. It's also important to determine where burnout comes from, LOTC requires you to make about 80% of your fun yourself, if you're not ambitious or creative all the time then you'll spend a lot of your time bored, running in circles while talking in chat. Interacting with other people on LOTC can also be especially grating, since there are a lot more petty people on this server than you think. You're probably living in about 3 people's heads rent free at any given point, OOC chat is typically in a state of silence, arguing or memes, and much of the dialogue surrounding the server is not in a great place. Interacting with the server outside of RP can be very fatiguing. Feel around for what bothers you on the server and just simply turn it off or stop giving it your attention and that should help greatly with reducing burnout buildup.

I imagine all three would be very disappointed.

I think Balas might play Omar? Karaag'ul couldn't play, since he's a construct I imagine he's like TASbot, but if he could it would probably be ROB or Donkey Kong

Balas reconsiders whether he really needs atronach forging, an indescribable anger within his chest. He pins the missive back to the notice board, and looks to his two golems conversing in the square, his eye twitches.

Are relics no longer required for conjurors to cast?

Fire Projectile - If John Empire fires three flaming arrows at me in the span of four emotes I'm shitting my pants. T2: The projectile is the size of a fist. 3 emotes. Every [2] additional projectiles requires 1 extra charge emote, capped at [3] max. Charging any further projectiles raises the manacost to [T3], capped at [7] total projectiles. T3: The projectile is 1 meter in diameter. 4 emotes. Every additional projectile requires 1 extra charge emote, capped at [3] max. Charging any further projectile raises the maancost to [T4], capped at [6] projectiles max. Flame Wall [Deployable btw] - Self explanatory, John Empire can now deploy a flame wall by pissing on the battlefield where he wants it. T3: A wall 6 meters in length and 3 meters in height can be created and used to encircle a 1 meter radius. This spell may be sustained for 4 emotes. Every 3 emotes after that expends the same tier of mana cost. 4 emotes to cast. Fire Pillar - okay this one's just a really tall Will-o-wisp alchemy bottle?? T3: A pillar 1 meters long and 1 meters wide can be projected from the ground up to a maximum height of 6 meters. 3 emotes. Firestorm - Dear god, John Empire, a normal guy, just spawned a flaming tornado by spinning his sword around really fast. I don't think I'm leaving this battle alive! T3: The firestorm is a vortex of fire 2 meters in radius and 6 meters tall which can be sustained for 2 emotes and no longer. 4 emotes. Flame Field - The sheer aura of this man is so intense, it feels like I'm burning up! T3: Flame Field can cover a 3x3 area at max and can be sustained for 5 emotes. Every 5 emotes after that costs the same as casting the spell again. 4 emotes. Solar Flare - HELP JOHN EMPIRE JUST POINTED AT ME AND SPAWNED THE SUN IN MY LIVING ROOM! T3: Solar Flare is a stationary orb considered [1] meter in diameter and illuminates a [4] meter radius. Sears targets [2] meters away from it to the first degree. 4 emotes. Turnfire Mantle - Holy shit, John Empire just walked through that dragon's fire like it was nothing??? Mechanics: Over 3 emotes, a fire evocationist may construct a cloak entirely wrought of voidal flames around themselves that negates and absorbs ONE source of fire (and equivalents), lasting 3 emotes or 15 narrative minutes out of combat. The spell requires a degree of nuance only innate to the mage which exempts them from harm, but prevents them from casting this upon anyone else for the same reason. Should the spell successfully capture a source of flame from an offensive spell its duration immediately ends, magically empowering the mage and granting a mana-free cast of Ignite in any of its tiers. Continuous streams of flame such as flamethrowers are also only negated for one emote. Additionally, the user will be protected passively from mundane fire - they may walk unharmed through a burning building while the spell is maintained. The protection of this cloak is by no means absolute as it exclusively protects the target from only ONE source of flame, specifically Voidal Flame, Dragonsflame, and alchemically wrought fires. The fiery nature of Turnfire Mantle does not translate to automatic protection, and requires explicit intent and action from the mage. This spell is considered T3 in manacost. I hate to be that guy, but this is the vast majority of ONE voidal magic, and we're already exceeding what a normal person can do off rip. I don't even know what the other magics can do. Keep in mind all of these spells have Armor Heating mechanics, set things on fire and inflict various degrees of burns. There's actually so few cases of Fire Evo having T5 spells you'd actually use it's laughable. I'm not gonna accuse you of making the argument above in bad faith, but I will say the take is objectively incorrect.

✩ While a mage’s aura is entirely freeform in presentation, it must be encompassing in some manner. It is considered powergaming to have an aura that only manifests in small areas, such as the hands or eyes, within combat. I understand the argument for eyes, but why are hands considered powergame-y? I usually have my Aura be a pastel red light that glows from my palms to indicate a voidal connection is present, overriding any gloves or jewelry. I genuinely did not know people have a problem with this?? ✩ A mage’s aura cannot provide any form of obscurement or blinding brightness, and at most is translucent. The aura likewise must surround the mage and cannot be displaced in any manner. No Stands. Okay so to simplify the issue of freeform, every mage effectively has a colorful/slightly patterned DBZ super saiyan aura around them, is that what this is saying or am I misunderstanding this? ✩ A mage is not required to include the name, emote or sustain counts, nor their current level of Exhaustion within casting emotes. During [ET] events, however, it is expected the mage do this alongside clearly naming their current spell of use. I feel like this could be re-worded. I get what you're going for, trying to remove the obligation to tell your opponent what you're doing, but the way this is written I feel also gives an excuse for people to engage in apathetic bad-faith vague emoting. It's not a bad thing that people indicate exhaustion, spell count or selected spell, just a courtesy. It's important to remember the majority of people you fight will not have read voidal lore pages and likely have no idea what your spell does, so it's extremely helpful to them that you spell it out for them to engage fairly, especially with pages like the recent Fire Evo re-write whose redlines specifically state it is the mage's responsibility to clearly explain the effects of the spell they are using and how the fire works. This is moreso a nitpick than it is anything to lose sleep over, though. ✩ A forced disconnection for any reason preventing re-connection for [1] emote following the disconnection to ANY magic. After that, the mage can connect to any magic as normal. This does NOT prevent any other actions during this period. Typo, I think you meant to say "A forced disconnection for any reason prevents re-connection...". ◈ Any form of harmful or wounding physical contact or pain beyond a scrap, cut, slap, or shove will disconnect the mage. scrape* To cast spells, a mage will always require [1] emote to establish a connection to the Void, which they passively maintain throughout interrupted casting. uninterrupted* Mᴀɴᴀ & Exʜᴀᴜꜱᴛɪᴏɴ I have mixed feelings on this entire section. For one, I really like the fact that we are clearly dictating how much a mage can cast, a large part of powergaming/weakgaming that occurs with voidal mages comes from the vagueness of the original lore post. This, truthfully, is a systemic problem spurred by both player writers and LT writers fear of committing to a hard stance. For some reason, there's this pervading feeling that nothing can be clearly defined otherwise it encroaches on the player's expression, which instead just happens to be the source of almost all powergaming (how can you expect to enforce powergaming when 2/3rds of the time the referenced lore is vagueposting or just outright doesn't account for the existence of other magics, and asking for clarification in the ST discord gets you accused of being a filthy minmaxxer or the classic "find out IRP"? I would say this is entirely an ST generated problem, but it also is a consequence of the fact that a lot of lore is also written by players who do not know every facet of LOTC lore.) That said, this solution, while neat, feels very game-y. It's also incredibly imbalanced, giving T5 mages more than 2 casts of a T5 spell is kind of insane considering the new Fire Evo rewrite has only three spells you'd ever consider cast at tier 5, those being Fire Projectile, Fire Storm and Flamethrower, and are absolutely not required to be T5 to get the job done. This same problem extends to the unlimited use of T1 - T3, do you realize how many Fire projectiles that is? "T2: The projectile is the size of a fist. 3 emotes. Every [2] additional projectiles requires 1 extra charge emote, capped at [3] max. Charging any further projectiles raises the manacost to [T3], capped at [7] total projectiles." Not to mention almost every single 2 Slotted spell in Fire evo is either T3 or T4. Accepting this lore piece as is would effectively make Fire Evocationists mana-less (exhaustion-less?). I think you may have been considering events when doing the balancing of this part, but keep in mind most combative encounters rarely last beyond 8 - 9 turn rotations (times you can emote), meaning under the current 64 base system allows you to at maximum cast two T5 spells assuming combat is abnormally long. The reason for this implimentation, is because mages are meant to be an alternative style of combat, not a better kind of combat outright. Mana and exhaustion pulls them back into the same realm of pacing that melee and ranged fighters with no MAs or FAs typically encounter, so that they're not spamming attacks consequence free while the warrior is huffing and puffing after his sixth sword swing. This, however, is my interpretation, my opinion. I also like what you did with Thaumburn, but I would maybe change the second offense to something other than knocking themself out, that seems more like a failsafe to keep you from getting to stage 3. I like to think that Thaumburn in this lore submission would act as an ingame wrist slap on powergamers. I would even go so far as to say that mods who find mages powergaming exhaustion should be able to mark their Voidal Connection feat permanently with one stage of thaumburn, so rather than a random blacklist with no in roleplay explanation, continued powergaming outright PK's your character. This might be seen as a bit harsh though. ✩ Should a character be subjected to arcane atrophy & magical weakness from another source, whichever weakens the character most will always take precedence; arcane atrophy does not “stack” or otherwise overlap with other sources of magically induced weakness. Does this mean Voidal Mage Mystic Conjurors aren't 4x weakened? [Tier 4] [Empowering Circle] [Ritual] Empowering Circle of multiple fire mages seeking to empower Fulminating Blast would be hilarious. The learning of rare voidal knowledge, unless specified otherwise within a lore page, only requires the mage to partake in the ritual at least once, or be instructed upon it by a mage of the appropriate tear to lead said process. The only exception to these are Voidal Tearing (Which always requires a mage to partake in the creation of one to learn). appropriate tier* also, what constitutes rare knowledge? I'm actually not sure if this is specified already on other lore pages.