the rise of the cult of Bloodmoon...

[Glaumring the Fox]

After a long deep sleep the Green hind has woken from her slumber, the Bloodmoon plant has been most likely eradicated from the east lands and is now something merely remembered in times of far madness mumbled by crazy men in villages and lore to scare children at night. Legend says that in far Vakreno heaps the last orchard rests with plump fruits as large as the heads of horses eaten now by Daimons, the plant has been lost to mankind, stomped out, crushed and its sacred fruit ignored to rot upon the branch...

There light! The Storms keep tower bonfire has been lit once again, some say an ancient man has returned from long sojourn to the keep, a dark swarthy long haired wrinkled and tattooed man wearing the great bear cloak now ragged. Some say they search the cliffs hung on ropes with torches, a  few brave peasants and ancient ones,

Some say they search for Bloodmoon fruit, some say that it would be madness they'll find....

Until then, the light of the Storms keep rises with the moon once again... What will they find?

[Abstract]

Interesting. I've been working on building a character, well more like family, out of a variant of the Bloodmoon Fruit and the cult. Without "spoiling" the entire backstory I have planned: it involves a character of my previous family, Perotin, planting this variant of the fruit in different places. One of those places is Mt. Black Nastrond which is close to your character from my understanding. Which brings me to the point of my reply, if you want a place to find the Bloodmoon fruit and haven't already created a story/location, then feel free to loosely connect our two story-lines in this way. It would not be illogical for Perotin to have brought the normal Bloodmoon fruit with him and possibly planted it.

[Chenier]

The Glory of Days Long Gone Await in Places Long Forgotten

[Glaumring the Fox]

Interesting. I've been working on building a character, well more like family, out of a variant of the Bloodmoon Fruit and the cult. Without "spoiling" the entire backstory I have planned: it involves a character of my previous family, Perotin, planting this variant of the fruit in different places. One of those places is Mt. Black Nastrond which is close to your character from my understanding. Which brings me to the point of my reply, if you want a place to find the Bloodmoon fruit and haven't already created a story/location, then feel free to loosely connect our two story-lines in this way. It would not be illogical for Perotin to have brought the normal Bloodmoon fruit with him and possibly planted it.

We are roleplaying that we found a single bush on the cliffs of the Storms keep, you can find a variant of it or a weaker version that comes from the tomb isles because some does exist there, it was the ones grown at the storms keep that were the more powerful hybrid, anything you want to do or add is welcome as I find it interesting to still see interest in that line of roleplay after all these years.

[Chenier]

IIRC, since this stuff is about 10 years old...

Bloodmoon Palm was said to be native to Raviel island, in D'Hara/Shadovar. Colonists from there brought it with them to the north, in Thulsoma, where they adopted religious beliefs around its psychedelic effects. When this cult gained attention in D'Hara, interest grew in how to best handle the matter. Eventually, a delirious and near-dead priestess of the cult came to D'Hara, where she was executed as a form of mercy killing. From then on, D'Hara considered the fruit to be a dangerous life-destroying drug, ignoble and a threat to the nation. Wild populations were destroyed. However, before such radical measures were adopted, a breeding program had also begun work on the species, and had managed to develop cultivars that lacked psychedelic effects. These were grown in Qubel, namely, in royal orchards. They were reserved for the royalty, and served to fabricate a rare and high-quality wine-like beverage. Their flowers were also better adapted to pollination by colonial honey bees, bred by Machiavel Chénier that was looking to improve crop yields on the isles.

http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Bloodmoon

Actually, rereading that, I think the royal strains were "less psychadelic", and not "non-psychadelic", hence the regulations maintained on them, and why they were transformed instead of consumed raw.

I don't think anybody's RPed bloodmoon palm in D'Hara in many, many years. So what happened to those royal orchards...? Was there any interest in them after the death of Dragon King Machiavel? I doubt it.

Likewise, bloodmoon palm was RPed to have been imported into Asylon. Those lands have been untouched in ages. What happened to their orchards?

Questions that remain to be answered by those willing to RP them.

The species is likely endangered, however. You could probably expect 3 genotypes (cultivars) to exist, at most, in D'Hara. Only 1 is RPed to have survived in Avernus. So you got 4 specimens at most from settled lands. Then you have Asylon... were those cuttings brought in from the colonists? Or planted from seeds? Perennials are rarely planted from seeds, so odds are the genetic diversity in those lands is poor at best, if not non-existant (do monsters eat bloodmoon palm?).

All this said, my theoretical model is the apple tree. I know pretty much nothing about palm trees... and how they grow. But I've been told that almost all bananas grown belong to the same cultivar, or at most a handful of cultivars, so if that's true, then probably the model is close enough.

[Chenier]

We are roleplaying that we found a single bush on the cliffs of the Storms keep, you can find a variant of it or a weaker version that comes from the tomb isles because some does exist there, it was the ones grown at the storms keep that were the more powerful hybrid, anything you want to do or add is welcome as I find it interesting to still see interest in that line of roleplay after all these years.

Oh yea... about hydrids... was it roleplayed that Thulsoma had its own native species of bloodmoon palm, and that it was when crossed with the ravielan species that the hybrids were themselves particularly psychotropic?

[Glaumring the Fox]

Yeah we rp’d that we crossed the Ravielian palm with a more hardy plant in the north, so they are different species, the ravelian palms fruit were small like acorns, Thulsoman hybrids were large like egg plants and they were the ones transported to Asylon, the Orchard is Vakreno heaps was where the golden age of breeding occured for a prolonged amount if time and the fruit was said to be as large as pumpkins plump orbs hanging low on the trees.

The effect of eating the fruit was a way for its adherents to actually travel to the Astral plane of its gods, the outer plane was the river and field fen and forest of the sacred Green hind deer, this is where most would end up and stay following the hind , lost in the forest, beyond the forest was the labyrinth and even Glaumring had ever been to the edge, but some say Lady Ven and one other Bucklefee had been inside, beyond the labyrinth is the fabric of the stars a wall of blackness where the Bloodstars hang, they can be seen in the sky but are very far beyond the maze.  Glaumring had sailed in his youth while under the service the Prophet Mathurin to sail beyond the west lands of Darfix where he found the great ice fields and eventually the stone temple of the astrolab that resides many months west of Darfix, Glaumring claimed to have measured the stars distance and renarked that if one could build something tall enough one might be able to climb near the stars, Glaumring cast a star disc from clay of the Astrolab and brought it back to Thulsoma and used it several times under the influence of the sacred fruit to measure the stars distance on the Astralplane, he still has this star disc though hasnt used it in decades.

[Graeth]

Graeth started an orchard in Tamirak or one of the other regions around Unterstrom during the western diaspora.

Also roleplayed more after I executed that one infiltrator who was a part of Asylon and killed my own character, who was the high priest at the time I think. Had my character slit his throat and bleed out over a bunch of seeds. Not sure if that was ever picked up.

[Glaumring the Fox]

Graethe, Glaumring and Grimrog. Hoowahh！

We’ll bring back player rp after this massive drought from the monster wars, time to end the monster crap and bring back what made Dwilight awesome, the human intrigue and strategy, the drama, all this npc fighting is boring as !@#$ and has killed the characters of Dwilight. GM’s let us have our armies back and our roleplays!

[Vita`]

Did everyone forget that realms weren't doing anything before the rogues either? It wasn't the rogues that caused players not interacting...

[Logar]

Graeth started an orchard in Tamirak or one of the other regions around Unterstrom during the western diaspora.

Also roleplayed more after I executed that one infiltrator who was a part of Asylon and killed my own character, who was the high priest at the time I think. Had my character slit his throat and bleed out over a bunch of seeds. Not sure if that was ever picked up.

I do have some vague recollection of that storyline. Don't think anything followed on though.

@Vita - I cannot speak for other realms of course, but if I recall Asylon was always fairly rich with activity until after the exodus and being denied a settlement in the East. Asylon may have been the exception at that time.

[Logar]

Sharn was given a small vial of Bloodmoon juice which she carries around with her upon a necklace to this very day. It was given to her by her Brother Logar before his disappearance years ago.

One night when Sharn was fighting monsters in a lair, she had her arm bitten off and left for dead. moments before her death, she consumed some bloodmoon which allowed her conciousness (soul/spirit) to take sanctuary within the folds. Her body was recovered and rushed to an old derelict temple in a woodland. During a bloodmoon ritual her body was revived and her conciousness allowed to return from the folds, at cost of her arm of course. Henceforth she is known as Sharn 'The One Armed'. The identty of her saviour was never revealed to the readers...

I deeply regret not saving the RP's of that incident.

[Chenier]

Yeah we rp’d that we crossed the Ravielian palm with a more hardy plant in the north, so they are different species, the ravelian palms fruit were small like acorns, Thulsoman hybrids were large like egg plants and they were the ones transported to Asylon, the Orchard is Vakreno heaps was where the golden age of breeding occured for a prolonged amount if time and the fruit was said to be as large as pumpkins plump orbs hanging low on the trees.

Do you think you could update the Bloodmoon wiki? Include what species there were (such as the two described), what set them apart, where they were from, and what's left on the initial settlements. Also know locations or potential locations of surviving wild populations or orchards? Are the different species easy to cross? How many varieties were grown? Were they clonal orchards with a handful of cultivars, or were they grown by seeds, like some more exotic fruits in poorer countries still are? Other than fruit size, what else sets the species and hybrids apart? Etc.

I can and have contributed to the page, but my characters haven't really been involved in any of that for ages, and even then it was only a tiny bit, bloodmoon wine was a luxury product, but little more.

@Vita - I cannot speak for other realms of course, but if I recall Asylon was always fairly rich with activity until after the exodus and being denied a settlement in the East. Asylon may have been the exception at that time.

I think Vita isn't talking about when the West was closed, but rather when it was re-opened, but before all the tweaks that made the monsters hammer the eastern realms. I'd say there was over a year between these two periods. Westgard, D'Hara, and Madina soaked up a ton of invasions due to easterners' lack of density before the monsters were coded to swim and better target low density realms. But during that time, the eastern realms did nothing. At most, a few of them came west, some to help Westgard a bit, but mostly really just to loot and just get rich.

Early Dwi was awesome. IMO, it peaked in 2013. But the game isn't the same, the culture has evolved. I see a few of us oldies are now interested in bringing back some of the "good stuff" from long forgotten times, but we do have to keep in mind we are a minority, and most players don't care, or at least don't have the energy/motivation anymore.

[Glaumring the Fox]

I am not near as active as I used to because of life etc, but I still love the game and enjoy the tapestry we used to weave. Losing Asylon was the hugest dissapointment ever, we were on the verge of having a true east/west divide conflict with a power ready to take om Sanguis Astroism and what happened was the slow fizzle and monster attacks that instead could have been an ascendant westlands and crumbling decadent empires in the east. Such wasted oppourtunity after all the work we put into building Asylon from nothing under attacks from Caerwynn, Itaulon, Phantosia, Terran, Astrum, Kabrinskia and Morek and for us to survive and thribe and grow to such a massive piece of land... omg such waste, so sad