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BattleMaster => Locals => Beluaterra => Topic started by: songqu88@gmail.com on March 07, 2011, 05:59:32 PM
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First off, those survivors of past Invasions, how was the aftermath in those? Were there more undead and monsters than usual?
The difference here is that the blight limits expansion. So where to from here? Even after the invaders have left, there are still ripples that cause damage throughout. Enweil remains much weaker than it once was, Bara'Khur is all but dead, the Meridian Republic is gone, Thalmarkin is unable to regain its former lands for a long time to come, the only way to reach Riombara is through Enweil and a narrow choke of one region.
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The difference here is that the blight limits expansion. So where to from here?
Dwilight!
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Dwilight!
You know the deal about how you don't offer a light to someone you just rescued from a fire? Here, it's basically "Yo guys, we just survived being burnt by daimons, eaten by monsters, and turned into undead. Let's go for round two in Dwilight!" ;D
Although in all honesty Dwilight does have some nasty monsters occasionally.
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You know the deal about how you don't offer a light to someone you just rescued from a fire? Here, it's basically "Yo guys, we just survived being burnt by daimons, eaten by monsters, and turned into undead. Let's go for round two in Dwilight!" ;D
Although in all honesty Dwilight does have some nasty monsters occasionally.
Your complaint was that there wasn't enough space for the realms that traditionally occupy Beluterra. My solution addresses that complaint.
And besides, the Daimons on dwilight more or less leave everyone alone. The monsters and undead are annoying, but as long as your realm sits next to another, the monsters only come from one direction.
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On Beluaterra, I observe, I don't complain. I did kind of help out the invaders after all. Sorry about that. :-[
I don't really care what realms do, I'm cool with seeing how they go about solving it. But it is undeniable that space is more limited.
More importantly, the point of my original post was to ask those who have been in past Invasions to talk about the aftermaths back then. Were there also large swarms in the backlash?
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No, there were not those large swarms, at least not in the Third Invasion.
Really, as I remember it, the Third Invasion was pretty mild. I seem to remember Vlaanderen was destroyed; maybe that was also when Old Fronen was destroyed? I don't exactly remember. Luz de Bia bit the dust then as well. But, overall, it wasn't half as apocalyptic as the current one, and had little to no lingering consequences. We were back to fighting each other pretty quickly.
I'd say that, though Enweil has fewer regions, it is actually more powerful than before. It has virtually no borders with human realms now, so can't easily be conquered, and doesn't have the burden of feeding Ete City, but lost comparatively few rural regions. If and when the monsters/undead can be beaten back and stability restored, Enweil will be in an exceptionally powerful position, especially as Riombara lost its biggest breadbaskets: Cagamir and Bolkenia, as well as it's ally in the Dominion, and nobody can easily assault Enweil from the other side.
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I turned up in Beluaterra a good while after the Second Invasion I think. That was the last invasion not to have RP driven hordes. I think a heck of a lot of realms and regions were driven rogue and a lot of damage was done to Beluaterra though. Utterly ravaged populations and what have you, whilst we were also labouring under a different tax and hierarchy system back then. Talk persisted for ages of how realms were still recovering from invasion six months or so after I arrived. It was inhibiting war across the continent. The lingering debilitating effects actually delayed the imposition of the Third Invasion a lot longer than it was supposed to I believe.
The aftermath of the Third Invasion was different. There were a fair few rogue and daimon held regions dotted about, but most surviving realms were generally territorially intact and their economies were not completely ruined and/or eradicated. So yes, there was some damage to everyone, but not as painful as you might think. Food was an issue at the time. I can't really tell you whether hordes still roamed or what have you. I quickly cleared off to Wudenkin to help the newly established Valhus feed itself. I was just trading.
The Third Invasion sort of ended with a whimper rather than a bang you see. One minute it was invasion, the next it wasn't. A few realms worked together then to destroy the last vestiges of Arcane's realm, Vlaanderen. There was discussion here and there about what to do about a few surviving daimonic enclaves. I think Heen, Sint, Mesh and perhaps Old Grehk briefly teamed together to try to tackle the lands north of Sint but they were never recovered. Then Mesh made it her duty to quest all over to destroy surviving daimonic enclaves although she'd made it round most rather than all of them by the time the Fourth Invasion finally rolled round...
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Revan's description is exactly my own impression and memory as well.
Especially Mesh's crusades around the continent against the last daimon holdouts.
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After the third invasion realms were pretty quick to re-claim the regions lost. The regions held by the invaders also had large numbers of Daimons in them so the monsters/undead that spawned there were destroyed by the Daimon Militia rather than wandering into human held lands.
Mesh would have continued to push on the northern Daimon lands but after our failed attack it seemed impossible to capture the area. The Daimons just brought more troops through the portal..
There was a storyline that the Daimon's regions around Beluaterra after the 3rd invasion were their breeding grounds but I don't recall that carrying over into the 4th invasion. I'm not sure if thats because of Mesh and other realms actually had destroyed them all or if it was dropped?
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Well, the Daimons came out from Jobo's Mouth or thereabouts. All their other regions had been destroyed before then.
Based on what I can gather from the wiki, the second invasion was very severe. Old Grehk was one of the larger survivors and only had 4-5 regions at the end.
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No, there were not those large swarms, at least not in the Third Invasion.
Really, as I remember it, the Third Invasion was pretty mild. I seem to remember Vlaanderen was destroyed; maybe that was also when Old Fronen was destroyed? I don't exactly remember. Luz de Bia bit the dust then as well. But, overall, it wasn't half as apocalyptic as the current one, and had little to no lingering consequences. We were back to fighting each other pretty quickly.
I'd say that, though Enweil has fewer regions, it is actually more powerful than before. It has virtually no borders with human realms now, so can't easily be conquered, and doesn't have the burden of feeding Ete City, but lost comparatively few rural regions. If and when the monsters/undead can be beaten back and stability restored, Enweil will be in an exceptionally powerful position, especially as Riombara lost its biggest breadbaskets: Cagamir and Bolkenia, as well as it's ally in the Dominion, and nobody can easily assault Enweil from the other side.
The burden of feeding Ete? I'd take that burden back any day. It only took a freaking day or so for Ete to be Blighted, we still had men there when it happened.
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The Third Invasion sort of ended with a whimper rather than a bang you see. One minute it was invasion, the next it wasn't. A few realms worked together then to destroy the last vestiges of Arcane's realm, Vlaanderen. There was discussion here and there about what to do about a few surviving daimonic enclaves. I think Heen, Sint, Mesh and perhaps Old Grehk briefly teamed together to try to tackle the lands north of Sint but they were never recovered. Then Mesh made it her duty to quest all over to destroy surviving daimonic enclaves although she'd made it round most rather than all of them by the time the Fourth Invasion finally rolled round...
Except it pissed off Sint, and Sint threatened them never to attack Jobo's again as there were still some semi-active daimons there.
Mesh went after a few nests, but barely any. It was more of an excuse to tresspass and assist Riombara than anything. There were still plenty of daimon nests around when they decided to gang-bang Enweil with all the other western realms.
Then, after a ceasefire was signed with Enweil, she went after Bara'Khur. Mesh' crusade was nothing but fluff, they spoke a lot more about it than they did anything, and they spent most of their time between the two invasions attacking other realms than attacking nests.
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A regret of Mesh will remain that we never got around to destroying Sint for their alliance with the Daimons. There was so many things to do after the 3rd invasion, hunt the Blood Cult, kill daimons, destroy Sint. Part of the varied focus at times came from different leaders elected.
Mesh did help destroy Vlaanderen whom we viewed as traitors to humanity for making a Daimon their God. I disagree that Mesh did little about the nests. We marched troops all the way to the islands to fight them and our actions provoked one of the few actions by the Daimons after the main invasion when the Daimons attacked us.
Our war with Enweil had to do with the Blood Cult, which Mesh viewed as evil and working with the Daimons. I know you and the rest of Enweil have a different view of why we were involved but thats the reason I remember discussed from having a character in the realm at that time.
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I was only on Beluaterra for about a year before the fourth invasion, but I remember that Mesh stayed out of the War of the Nine Realms until after they destroyed the last two Daimon nests outside the Jobo area.
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A regret of Mesh will remain that we never got around to destroying Sint for their alliance with the Daimons. There was so many things to do after the 3rd invasion, hunt the Blood Cult, kill daimons, destroy Sint. Part of the varied focus at times came from different leaders elected.
Mesh did help destroy Vlaanderen whom we viewed as traitors to humanity for making a Daimon their God. I disagree that Mesh did little about the nests. We marched troops all the way to the islands to fight them and our actions provoked one of the few actions by the Daimons after the main invasion when the Daimons attacked us.
Our war with Enweil had to do with the Blood Cult, which Mesh viewed as evil and working with the Daimons. I know you and the rest of Enweil have a different view of why we were involved but thats the reason I remember discussed from having a character in the realm at that time.
You chose your "evils". You continuously fought alongside Sint, and betrayed the realm that founded you over a fringe religion having but a handful of followers in it (and even having greater numbers of followers and temples in other realms). Sint worshipped the invaders as gods, tried to summon their "destroyer" god, and unleashed their armies against the other realms of the continent. The Blood Cult did...
Yet it was the greater evil? No, the Blood Cult was a pretext. There were a *lot* of clues that were picked up that Mesh would eventually betray Enweil, it came as a surprise only to those too blinded by the memories of the old days.
Basically all realms engaged in long walks to fight the daimons. Rio did, Enweil did, all according to their abilities and opportunities. Considering this, Mesh did not do any more than anyone else. Hell, considering they had much greater opportunity and capacity to act, they did considerably less than many.
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Actually... ehm... that was one of the many storylines that went undiscovered during the 3rd invasion. The Daimons had grasped that humans can be influenced through religion. They set up or infiltrated several religions and secret societies. :-D
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You chose your "evils". You continuously fought alongside Sint, and betrayed the realm that founded you over a fringe religion having but a handful of followers in it (and even having greater numbers of followers and temples in other realms). Sint worshipped the invaders as gods, tried to summon their "destroyer" god, and unleashed their armies against the other realms of the continent. The Blood Cult did...
Yet it was the greater evil? No, the Blood Cult was a pretext. There were a *lot* of clues that were picked up that Mesh would eventually betray Enweil, it came as a surprise only to those too blinded by the memories of the old days.
Basically all realms engaged in long walks to fight the daimons. Rio did, Enweil did, all according to their abilities and opportunities. Considering this, Mesh did not do any more than anyone else. Hell, considering they had much greater opportunity and capacity to act, they did considerably less than many.
Yes we were allied with Sint for a time but not because we liked them or suddenly forgot what they did during the war. We allied them to fight the Daimons at Jopo's Mouth. It was considered a necessary evil to fighting the Daimons at the time. Given the right opportunity and ability to do so we would have been glad to see Sint get what it deserved despite their supposed repenting of their ways after the 3rd invasion.
Also, considering various individuals within the Blood Cult were part of the Netherworld we did think they were a big threat. We thought the Daimons were using it as a way to gain influence in human realms.
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Also, considering various individuals within the Blood Cult were part of the Netherworld we did think they were a big threat. We thought the Daimons were using it as a way to gain influence in human realms.
And you were right. :-)
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Yeah, until Valachi decided to badmouth Sherilynn. Then the Blood Cult pretty much got slaughtered. Valachi Stefanovic obviously was executed. Vistuvis Adriddae was fed to minor daemons, Malfurion Stormrage, am I missing anyone?
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Yeah, until Valachi decided to badmouth Sherilynn. Then the Blood Cult pretty much got slaughtered. Valachi Stefanovic obviously was executed. Vistuvis Adriddae was fed to minor daemons, Malfurion Stormrage, am I missing anyone?
Without looking at my archives, I think thats it for daimon-induced death (my apologies to whoever I'm forgetting if this isn't the case).
Yes we were allied with Sint for a time but not because we liked them or suddenly forgot what they did during the war. We allied them to fight the Daimons at Jopo's Mouth. It was considered a necessary evil to fighting the Daimons at the time. Given the right opportunity and ability to do so we would have been glad to see Sint get what it deserved despite their supposed repenting of their ways after the 3rd invasion.
Yes we were allied with Sint for a time but not because we liked them or suddenly forgot what they did during the war. We allied them to fight the Daimons at Jopo's Mouth. It was considered a necessary evil to fighting the Daimons at the time. Given the right opportunity and ability to do so we would have been glad to see Sint get what it deserved despite their supposed repenting of their ways after the 3rd invasion.
Also, considering various individuals within the Blood Cult were part of the Netherworld we did think they were a big threat. We thought the Daimons were using it as a way to gain influence in human realms.
Also, considering various individuals within the Blood Cult were part of the Netherworld we did think they were a big threat. We thought the Daimons were using it as a way to gain influence in human realms.
You didn't ally sint to fight daimons, you allied them to fight Enweil. And after that war ended, you intervened in the same bloc as them again, this time to fight realms like Bara'Khur where the Cult had no members or influence.
And you were right. :-)
The level of the influence is debatable, and it went both ways. I founded the blood cult, and led it for 99% of its lifetime. Some individuals were more prone to daimon influence than others, but they mostly joined Daimon Worship when it was recreated. The official doctrine of the cult was always that daimons were to be exploited to our own ends. I can't speak for everyone, but I suspect most of the church's leaders, if not all, did not trust the daimons and knew they were walking a fine line, one which many crossed and that caused them their lives. Unlike some others, the Blood Cult did *not* want the continent to fall to any of the factions, and preffered to make them fight each other whenever possible. The Cult had grand ambitions, and the daimons taking everything over would have ruined that. Cultists were hardly the greater evil around.
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I found it strange that so many people who followed the daimons were all bloodthirsty and violent...and subsequently met violent ends. Ironic really. Daimons were pretty brutal but for some reason my experiences with them have been rather tame. :o
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I found it strange that so many people who followed the daimons were all bloodthirsty and violent...and subsequently met violent ends. Ironic really. Daimons were pretty brutal but for some reason my experiences with them have been rather tame. :o
There were many daimons with different personalities. Cultist lore taught that while the undead lacked the free will to be good or evil, and that the monsters lacked the intellect to act on it, daimons had both and were therefore no more good or evil as a species than humans were. A lot of the daimons were later proven to be much more docile than many/most humans.
Over the span of the last two invasions, there were many GMs involved in leading the(some) daimons. They played the daimons with different styles, personalities. It also seemed that the most brutal always had the greatest tendency to go inactive, so they became much less noticeable than the others.
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Yeah, until Valachi decided to badmouth Sherilynn. Then the Blood Cult pretty much got slaughtered. Valachi Stefanovic obviously was executed. Vistuvis Adriddae was fed to minor daemons, Malfurion Stormrage, am I missing anyone?
So that's what happened there! I always wondered, since my Infiltrator in the Daimon Faction got executed. I figured I got lucky and avoided Death by Daimons by getting executed by Heen(?).
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I just found it a bit boring I suppose that automatically most players who accidentally found themselves in the Netherworld or otherwise helped out the daimons were a bunch of wannabe evil, violent, greedy, sadistic, or some combination of the above, freaks. To give an example, Ahriman Himoura (Who apparently claimed to be the not-dead Rathan Himoura, who was apparently clearly executed in D'Hara by that time lol) killed his wife or whatever Sorsha McDowell in front of Sherilynn and Cimmerian. Cimmerian was more or less like :o while Sherilynn was like 8)
And then Ahriman went to Melhed and made the mistake of preaching Daimon Worship there which led to him getting captured and executed. For joy! I wonder if we'll see some Himoura in the future claiming to be not-dead Ahriman who is not-dead Rathan. ;D
But more to the point, the example is supposed to show something which has bugged me for a while. Over in Dwilight when Bowie Ironsides starting crowing his head off about being a Dark Demon Immortal Count Frankenstein Vampire Chocolate Retriever, I got to thinking. What's with people seemingly so eager to associate daimon to daemon (which also exists in BM in the names of unique items. Also, the special execution message said someone was fed to minor daemons, not daimons). I assume daemon is somewhat like an amalgamation of different interpretations of "demons" in the various traditions, Judeo-Christian demons, East-Asian demons (I guess pop culture would make some of us more familiar with the Japanese youkai), Middle Eastern demons, etc. But what about daimons? I asked Cimmerian's player once about it, and he/she basically said that daimons weren't exactly demonic. But I guess "demonic" is a bit vague as well.
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I just found it a bit boring I suppose that automatically most players who accidentally found themselves in the Netherworld or otherwise helped out the daimons were a bunch of wannabe evil, violent, greedy, sadistic, or some combination of the above, freaks. To give an example, Ahriman Himoura (Who apparently claimed to be the not-dead Rathan Himoura, who was apparently clearly executed in D'Hara by that time lol) killed his wife or whatever Sorsha McDowell in front of Sherilynn and Cimmerian. Cimmerian was more or less like :o while Sherilynn was like 8)
And then Ahriman went to Melhed and made the mistake of preaching Daimon Worship there which led to him getting captured and executed. For joy! I wonder if we'll see some Himoura in the future claiming to be not-dead Ahriman who is not-dead Rathan. ;D
Give them some credit, though. They basically had their characters paused for months (a year?) without really being able to do anything with them, due to how netherworld mechanics worked. I started the colony, but that was something I personally was not ready to do.
And don't confuse the daimon worshippers with the blood cultists, now.
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The Blood Cultists were not much different from the Daimon Worshippers, from what I have seen. Since there were only five human Daimon Worshippers anyway (six maybe?), Ahriman Himoura, Alexey Valentine, Kayne II Himoura, Letifer Animus, Ramuh Artemesia, and Renfield Immortals (Maybe?), there is probably less comparison to be drawn. I don't know how Letifer was, but I know that Alexey used to be Blood Cult before he narrowly escaped execution by the daimons and became a Daimon Worshipper. Renfield you can tell by the RP posted on the Delsantos wiki about how he was all bloodthirsty or something of that sort. The Himouras, well need I say anything about them? I have a feeling that Ramuh was the only human Daimon Worshipper who wasn't about gratuitous violence or greed or sadism, or some combination of the aforementioned.
Now Kayne II was originally part of the Blood Cult, and he was pretty bloody. I'm aware that what he does is probably not representative of the Blood Cult as a whole, but that still begs the question of what was with those really obnoxious humans being sadistic and violent just because they were part of the Netherworld. I thought even Epic of Gilgamesh respected the daimons for their strict ways and laws.
And finally, the Blood Cult did get chided by Marta of the Light for being "evil". ;D
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The Blood Cultists were not much different from the Daimon Worshippers, from what I have seen. Since there were only five human Daimon Worshippers anyway (six maybe?), Ahriman Himoura, Alexey Valentine, Kayne II Himoura, Letifer Animus, Ramuh Artemesia, and Renfield Immortals (Maybe?), there is probably less comparison to be drawn. I don't know how Letifer was, but I know that Alexey used to be Blood Cult before he narrowly escaped execution by the daimons and became a Daimon Worshipper. Renfield you can tell by the RP posted on the Delsantos wiki about how he was all bloodthirsty or something of that sort. The Himouras, well need I say anything about them? I have a feeling that Ramuh was the only human Daimon Worshipper who wasn't about gratuitous violence or greed or sadism, or some combination of the aforementioned.
Now Kayne II was originally part of the Blood Cult, and he was pretty bloody. I'm aware that what he does is probably not representative of the Blood Cult as a whole, but that still begs the question of what was with those really obnoxious humans being sadistic and violent just because they were part of the Netherworld. I thought even Epic of Gilgamesh respected the daimons for their strict ways and laws.
And finally, the Blood Cult did get chided by Marta of the Light for being "evil". ;D
These people joined the Cult only to get closer to the daimons. They never went up the ranks of the faith, and ditched it at first opportunity. They were not cultists at heart.
And I don't recall Marta ever saying straight up that we were evil. She did imply it by telling us we could still repent, but given how she had deemed Hemaism pure nobody in our parts really cared for what she thought.
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These people joined the Cult only to get closer to the daimons. They never went up the ranks of the faith, and ditched it at first opportunity. They were not cultists at heart.
And I don't recall Marta ever saying straight up that we were evil. She did imply it by telling us we could still repent, but given how she had deemed Hemaism pure nobody in our parts really cared for what she thought.
Well Sint and Hemaism aren't exactly known for sticking to their guns. They probably thought the Light was a better shot at winning than the daimons, much like the Meridian Republic thought the monsters would lead them to victory or something. Who knows, who cares. MR is gone and so is the Light. Now we're just left with rogue blighted regions and for some odd reason Netherworld is still around.
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Well Sint and Hemaism aren't exactly known for sticking to their guns. They probably thought the Light was a better shot at winning than the daimons, much like the Meridian Republic thought the monsters would lead them to victory or something. Who knows, who cares. MR is gone and so is the Light. Now we're just left with rogue blighted regions and for some odd reason Netherworld is still around.
Sint is Sint, we all know that by now. I mean Marta's words lost all credibility on a bunch of us when she declared that Hemaism, Daishi, and Qyrvaggism were pure. Hemaism particularly made us think "well if this is what they deem pure, they certainly aren't up to any good", while joining nobody but Enweil's enemies also cost them brownie points. From our point of view, the Light neither joined the most needy, the most deserving, or the most pious. Marta was also arrogant and snobby as hell.
OOC, I always suspected they were there to help. But everything IC hinted otherwise.
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There was something about how humans would have to learn how to combine the powers of the Light to prevent the NPCs from getting reinforcements. Anyone ever figure out how to do that? I suppose since Creasur's temple lost its enchantment the point became moot.
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There was something about how humans would have to learn how to combine the powers of the Light to prevent the NPCs from getting reinforcements. Anyone ever figure out how to do that? I suppose since Creasur's temple lost its enchantment the point became moot.
Actually, I think that happened and is the reason the invaders had to leave.
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There were these Archons (Not sure what their name was?) that weakened the Invasion Forces and the Light. The Invasion Forces had to do something with them (Capture? Get them to a certain region?) in order for them to stop getting weakened (Or something like that). No Force managed to capture their Archon and the Monsters didn't even seem to have tried, as Power was chilling out in Rines for a long time. The Monsters were the first faction to be defeated too. I do believe the Daimons tried, as I believe they requested Enweil's help (But I bet the Daimons didn't fully trust them anyway), but Enweil will have better knowledge of how and what happened there. No clue about the Undead, they mostly stayed up North away from us.
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There were these Archons (Not sure what their name was?) that weakened the Invasion Forces and the Light. The Invasion Forces had to do something with them (Capture? Get them to a certain region?) in order for them to stop getting weakened (Or something like that). No Force managed to capture their Archon and the Monsters didn't even seem to have tried, as Power was chilling out in Rines for a long time. The Monsters were the first faction to be defeated too. I do believe the Daimons tried, as I believe they requested Enweil's help (But I bet the Daimons didn't fully trust them anyway), but Enweil will have better knowledge of how and what happened there. No clue about the Undead, they mostly stayed up North away from us.
Right, I was forgetting about those. They popped and disappeared without us being able to do or think much about them.
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The fun part is that I saw the Archon in Creasur but I had no daimon unit at the time. Boohoo oh well.
I don't think the "Unite the Light" had anything to do with the "Protect the Archons" though.
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Mysteries, mysteries... quite a bit of what was planned didn't go as planned. ;)
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That's a given whenever input is allowed from independent agents capable of free will. Aka player interaction. The player will always manage to throw a wrench in the plans.
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Hehe, sometimes it's a cannonball, and sometimes it's a needle.
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Unlike some others, the Blood Cult did *not* want the continent to fall to any of the factions, and preffered to make them fight each other whenever possible. The Cult had grand ambitions, and the daimons taking everything over would have ruined that. Cultists were hardly the greater evil around.
Except for the Xerotl sect, that is. Our stance didn't change much from the third to the fourth...
Yeah, until Valachi decided to badmouth Sherilynn. Then the Blood Cult pretty much got slaughtered. Valachi Stefanovic obviously was executed. Vistuvis Adriddae was fed to minor daemons, Malfurion Stormrage, am I missing anyone?
Valachi had always viewed himself as an "avatar" of his god, and in the dogma of Xerotl's sect, Xerotl was a god who guarded the border between chaos and order. His rulership of the Netherworld was an attempt to prevent the sleeping beast from stirring. That is, to protect Man. Fun character.
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Mysteries, mysteries... quite a bit of what was planned didn't go as planned. ;)
What 'exactly', didn't go as planned? ;)
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What 'exactly', didn't go as planned? ;)
Well, you see, there are still *people* on Beluaterra, haha. :P
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And I didn't even get to hug Cimmerian goodbye :P On second thought, Seer would be a wiser choice. Meh. Go go humans! 8)
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Meh, go go invaders. :P
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Well, the humans kinda "won", so...yeah.
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Well, the humans kinda "won", so...yeah.
Well, "won" has a variety of ways it can be interpreted. You probably mean humans won because they survived, but I think that the invaders did a lot more damage than they should have, and so if that was their goal they did a pretty good job. ;)
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Well, "won" has a variety of ways it can be interpreted. You probably mean humans won because they survived, but I think that the invaders did a lot more damage than they should have, and so if that was their goal they did a pretty good job. ;)
Perhaps 'Humanity didn't lose' is closer to it, yes.
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If Epic's goal was to conquer BT, or gain recognition, then he may yet have lost in the end as his name is left as dust to scatter along the southern winds.
Somehow the Monsters' goals appear to be most straightforward, but that can be deceptive. There may yet be a hidden twist that we'll never figure out. Or maybe we might figure out in Beyond, eventually.
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Perhaps 'Humanity didn't lose' is closer to it, yes.
Hehe, Humanity came close, though, just a little more and poof! ;)
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Well, "won" has a variety of ways it can be interpreted. You probably mean humans won because they survived, but I think that the invaders did a lot more damage than they should have, and so if that was their goal they did a pretty good job. ;)
Yet much less than they could have.
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Yet much less than they could have.
Half the realms on the island are dead, large portions are entirely lost, and the geography has been completely changed. The only thing that wasn't destroyed was the other half of the realms - which would have happened had the Archons not proven so powerful.
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Hehe, Humanity came close, though, just a little more and poof! ;)
Suddenly, I miss MetaBets. Anyone else think this is probably the last invasion humans survive? >.<
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Or the last invasion that occurs within the main game?
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Or the last invasion that occurs within the main game?
I'd take that bet.
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Hey everyone, this is my first post and I'm not the Forum buff, so forgive me if my post will be somewhat... err... chaotic ;)
I played Benton during the 3rd and 4th invasion so at least I can give you a recollection of how I thought about the invasions and what Sint tried to achieve. Survival was our key perogative.
The Third Invasion sort of ended with a whimper rather than a bang you see. One minute it was invasion, the next it wasn't. A few realms worked together then to destroy the last vestiges of Arcane's realm, Vlaanderen. There was discussion here and there about what to do about a few surviving daimonic enclaves. I think Heen, Sint, Mesh and perhaps Old Grehk briefly teamed together to try to tackle the lands north of Sint but they were never recovered. Then Mesh made it her duty to quest all over to destroy surviving daimonic enclaves although she'd made it round most rather than all of them by the time the Fourth Invasion finally rolled round...
Except it pissed off Sint, and Sint threatened them never to attack Jobo's again as there were still some semi-active daimons there.
Mesh went after a few nests, but barely any. It was more of an excuse to tresspass and assist Riombara than anything. There were still plenty of daimon nests around when they decided to gang-bang Enweil with all the other western realms.
Then, after a ceasefire was signed with Enweil, she went after Bara'Khur. Mesh' crusade was nothing but fluff, they spoke a lot more about it than they did anything, and they spent most of their time between the two invasions attacking other realms than attacking nests.
That is simply not true, Sint tried to get rid of the daimons, we tried four times rallied support from Heen, Mesh and Old Grehk if I remember correctly and we got battered down every time even though we managed to gather around 40k each time. Heck, the GM's even had the bluntness to send everyone in the region an ooc message declaring that no matter how much we would try they'd find a way to survive, that they were instituted as a RP tool by the GM's. You cannot believe the fallout and the anger we all felt when after finally destroying around 20k CS they just spawned another 20k. Benton took the throne during the third invasion (it had already burnt out our previous pontifexes due to the unbearable pressure and volume of posts) we had continuously fought the daimons from that point on. In the three months directly after we constantly attacked their smaller groups of up to 10k CS killing up to 100k in the process I posted nearly all of those attacks on the rulers channel, but I guess propaganda stopped it from spreading. I admit it was well within the second half of the 3rd invasion that I took this step and Sint had gained Gethsemene and Keffa through our alliance with them, but with all honesty, I tried. Of course it didn't help no one believed me, except maybe Heen, and even in Sint there were many that favoured an alliance with the daimons over war. But I managed to silence them and found a way to gain support. Mesh may have despised us, but they knew very well that their attempts would be futile without us. You cannot blame them for that. And after the GM's declared daimon indestructibility we all fell back to old habits. I believe the great Beluaterra conflict started when Fronen attacked Old Grehk, and we joined on Old Grehks side after Vlaanderen was destroyed and all nests except Jobo had been cleansed.
You must know of all realms that suffered during both invasions Sint was I think the only one in position to actually have a good guess at the true strength of the Netherworld. While most nations were ravaged by parties of up to 100k, and yes that is awful, they always passed through Sint first. We knew that if there was to be another invasion, we would be the first to be eradicated, and we could have done nothing against it.
You chose your "evils". You continuously fought alongside Sint, and betrayed the realm that founded you over a fringe religion having but a handful of followers in it (and even having greater numbers of followers and temples in other realms). Sint worshipped the invaders as gods, tried to summon their "destroyer" god, and unleashed their armies against the other realms of the continent. The Blood Cult did...
Heh, yes we did, but only during the Pontifexes prior to me. And while it was only RPed that Benton believed the daimons betrayed Hemaglobe, I successfully managed to implement that thought in Sint. Hemaglobe created the daimons, they betrayed him by worshiping themselves and we then fought them alongside our god.
Well Sint and Hemaism aren't exactly known for sticking to their guns. They probably thought the Light was a better shot at winning than the daimons, much like the Meridian Republic thought the monsters would lead them to victory or something. Who knows, who cares. MR is gone and so is the Light. Now we're just left with rogue blighted regions and for some odd reason Netherworld is still around.
In my 900+ days as ruler I never wanted to work with the daimons, and it all came down to a vote within my council 'do we face off the daimons and probably loose most of our northern regions or get destroyed' or 'do we align with them and save our realm' of course back then we really tried allying with the daimons and I even had Benton RP an oath to uphold that alliance. However they treated us with no respect at all, we asked them for help numerous times against the undead and were told OG is not their ally, so no. It all boiled down with us getting seriously frustrated with them when the light popped up. I saw that chance and took it. Did you know I worked tirelessly to get Heen and Mesh a deal where they were to be left alone if they signed a defensive pact only to defend the netherworld against the other invading forces? If they had taken that chance we could have survived to fight another day. Actually that was the thought I kept in the back of my head when we allied with the daimons in the 4th invasion.
Sint is Sint, we all know that by now. I mean Marta's words lost all credibility on a bunch of us when she declared that Hemaism, Daishi, and Qyrvaggism were pure. Hemaism particularly made us think "well if this is what they deem pure, they certainly aren't up to any good", while joining nobody but Enweil's enemies also cost them brownie points. From our point of view, the Light neither joined the most needy, the most deserving, or the most pious. Marta was also arrogant and snobby as hell.
OOC, I always suspected they were there to help. But everything IC hinted otherwise.
Well, in this case I have to give credit to Caitlin Stormcrow, a good friend of mine. We managed to persuade Virgil that we were only in this alliance to save us from destruction and that Hemaglobe is not only the destroyer but makes space for something new to create (much like shiva in hinduism).
To sum things up, I don't want to persuade you to like Sint, but I wanted to get a few facts straight. This is of course all purely ooc from one player to another, so this isn't some game at propaganda or anything, just what I tried to achieve with Benton during the 3rd and 4th invasion. And yes we twisted and turned to get out of it alive. Much like any of you did, except maybe Heen and Mesh and while they have my greatest respect for sticking to their beliefs, it got them killed. I guess that is what I gained from this invasion, you do an awful lot to survive.
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I played Charles Mercer, ruler of Mesh for six months at the end of the 3rd invasion, and I am amazed at some of what I am reading here.
There was a very strong pride in the anti-daimon culture of Mesh among many of the characters in the realm. Many of us saw it as everyone's duty to eradicate all of the daimons, and Mesh took a leadership role in that effort. We did not use the daimon nests as an excuse to trespass in Enweil. We legitimately wanted just to wipe out daimons, and were frustrated that so many other realms would not help, for whatever reasons they had.
Even when we picked a fight with Enweil to get the Blood Cult temples destroyed, it was only because of our hatred of daimons and belief that the Cult was affiliated with the daimons. Many prominent members of Mesh were vocal in our council that we hoped to return to the old days of alliance with Enweil, and were sad that our old friend had strayed from our values. Our hatred of daimons was so strong that we picked the fight with them that got us destroyed, and would never compromise for our survival.
I enjoyed reading Aelradir's post about his experience in Sint during this time. I took a lot of flack for allying with Sint to strike Jobo's Mouth, and spent a large portion of my political capital. I wanted a united human continent against non-humans, but many Meshians held hard grudges against Sint for several reasons. I was disappointed when Sint joined the daimons in the 4th invasion because it justified the opposition against my decisions. Charles was actually on his way to Sint to pick some fights when he was killed by a group of Undead, shortly after the destruction of Mesh.
I will try to keep reading this thread because it is neat to see the more open and honest thought processes behind such a long and interesting story. I'll try to remember what I can from so long ago.
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I played Charles Mercer, ruler of Mesh for six months at the end of the 3rd invasion, and I am amazed at some of what I am reading here.
There was a very strong pride in the anti-daimon culture of Mesh among many of the characters in the realm. Many of us saw it as everyone's duty to eradicate all of the daimons, and Mesh took a leadership role in that effort. We did not use the daimon nests as an excuse to trespass in Enweil. We legitimately wanted just to wipe out daimons, and were frustrated that so many other realms would not help, for whatever reasons they had.
Even when we picked a fight with Enweil to get the Blood Cult temples destroyed, it was only because of our hatred of daimons and belief that the Cult was affiliated with the daimons. Many prominent members of Mesh were vocal in our council that we hoped to return to the old days of alliance with Enweil, and were sad that our old friend had strayed from our values. Our hatred of daimons was so strong that we picked the fight with them that got us destroyed, and would never compromise for our survival.
I enjoyed reading Aelradir's post about his experience in Sint during this time. I took a lot of flack for allying with Sint to strike Jobo's Mouth, and spent a large portion of my political capital. I wanted a united human continent against non-humans, but many Meshians held hard grudges against Sint for several reasons. I was disappointed when Sint joined the daimons in the 4th invasion because it justified the opposition against my decisions. Charles was actually on his way to Sint to pick some fights when he was killed by a group of Undead, shortly after the destruction of Mesh.
I will try to keep reading this thread because it is neat to see the more open and honest thought processes behind such a long and interesting story. I'll try to remember what I can from so long ago.
I will second this, I was there during the final days of Mesh, we were a full steam ahead Daimon killing realm and wondered the rest of the realms weren't.
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I will second this, I was there during the final days of Mesh, we were a full steam ahead Daimon killing realm and wondered the rest of the realms weren't.
Probably had to do something with Mesh falling in a matter of two weeks....
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Probably had to do something with Mesh falling in a matter of two weeks....
No we were fighting Daimons for months before that, when we got hit by the Daimons it was a kind of 'we knew this would happen' type of thing and then we all died. It was a shame that no other realms stood with us except Hetland.
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There was a very strong pride in the anti-daimon culture of Mesh among many of the characters in the realm. Many of us saw it as everyone's duty to eradicate all of the daimons, and Mesh took a leadership role in that effort. We did not use the daimon nests as an excuse to trespass in Enweil. We legitimately wanted just to wipe out daimons, and were frustrated that so many other realms would not help, for whatever reasons they had.
Damn. And you were right all the time, too.
I think the Daimons were exceptionally well played, at least in parts. As were most of the other factions, in that they really got people convinced that they were friends. That was fantastic to see, the in-fighting amongst humans about which of their friends was the real friend and who'd just betray them in the end, when of course they all would.
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Humans are pretty gullible, no? I think the deal with the daimons and monsters, but probably more so with the daimons, was that there were several players involved. Of course with the daimons, it just got a bit...weird with all the different stuff said about everything. Remember the whole Light=bad thing? Yeah...
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I think the main thing that made people think there were friendships possible were the books in The Dream, Tom. Honestly, I wish there was some more Beluaterra lore/history leaked in it. I think that's one of the things that make people look forward to the next game the most.
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According to some involved in the organization of 4th Inv, those books had questionable reliability. Since they were written quite obviously from the perspective of the Invader to which the book applied, more people probably should have been skeptical.
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Yeah, what Artemesia said. The books were in way authoritative, I thought The Dream made it pretty clear - you find each on in the lair of that faction. Hello? How could it have screamed "propaganda!" any louder? :-)
But, that exactly, was a main part of the plot for the 4th - that these invaders aren't unlike the humans in one aspect: They have reasons for what they do, and they think of themselves as the good guys.
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But, that exactly, was a main part of the plot for the 4th - that these invaders aren't unlike the humans in one aspect: They have reasons for what they do, and they think of themselves as the good guys.
The Many only want to help! Really!
not many remember the path of law leads to evil as well as good though...
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What?! The Undead were the Knight Templar faction?! Preposterous! ;D
Though if I think about it now, from a surface perspective, it appears that the factions have an interesting D&D alignment concept. Whether this is actually the case, I'd never know, nor would I ever know if it was intended, if the connection is true.
At first glance, the daimons were concerned with destruction, which is often a clear label for chaotic evil. The monsters appeared concerned with...conquest? Not really sure, it seemed like Epic was mostly a conqueror much like the human conquerors of legend, so neutral evil I guess because... One interpretation of ^ban^'s post could be that the Pact was some immutable law from which humans of the present could not deviate, so lawful evil.
But this is just me making wild guesses. Oh, and the Light...meh. Probably meant to be some sort of Good.
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People allied with the invaders because to not do so was death. The realms that did not ally with an invader faction were mostly destroyed. Riombara and Thlamarkin survived quite literally by the skin of their teeth, and both realms could have fallen but did not because invaders chose to pull punches (or went inactive at a bad time, maybe). Both realms lost battles in their *last* region at which point the invaders oddly did not begin a TO, or abandoned one in progress (I think thats what happened in Unger). The realms that weathered the storm best were either in the undead corner of the map, where the local invaders were inexplicably merciful compared to their southern and western counterparts, or were firmly allied to one faction or another. The lesson drawn I would say is that discretion is the better part of valor. Honestly if all the human realms had resisted to the end, the invaders would have probably conquered the map. It's not like human armies were capable of stopping them. Realms survived by taking sides and avoiding the wrath of the invaders closest to them.
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People allied with the invaders because to not do so was death. The realms that did not ally with an invader faction were mostly destroyed. Riombara and Thlamarkin survived quite literally by the skin of their teeth, and both realms could have fallen but did not because invaders chose to pull punches (or went inactive at a bad time, maybe). Both realms lost battles in their *last* region at which point the invaders oddly did not begin a TO, or abandoned one in progress (I think thats what happened in Unger). The realms that weathered the storm best were either in the undead corner of the map, where the local invaders were inexplicably merciful compared to their southern and western counterparts, or were firmly allied to one faction or another. The lesson drawn I would say is that discretion is the better part of valor. Honestly if all the human realms had resisted to the end, the invaders would have probably conquered the map. It's not like human armies were capable of stopping them. Realms survived by taking sides and avoiding the wrath of the invaders closest to them.
I think we needed to have allied with each other and faced the invaders much earlier in the war. Once they had claimed regions easily off realms like us in DoA they had that much more scope to recruit armies. We were told that the way to fight them was not necessarily with our own armies, but it always seemed to me that very few characters were willing to co-operate to work out what the other means may have been.
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Leave it to humans to subvert each other in times of crisis. But in this case, this was still a game, and one that I think engenders subversion. In the north, ^ban^ did hint that the Undead didn't have as a goal the destruction of the human realms. In the case of the daimons, I have some confidence that among their goals was in fact destruction which explains ICly the large swath of land the Netherworld was responsible for blighting. The monsters, I can have a somewhat educated guess that they sought conquest as one of their goals so taking over regions furthered those ends.
There was something about the Light, but I will defer to Anaris as to whether he is willing and/or allowed to reveal that alternative.
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For those who don't know me, I play Askarn, who was King of Old Grehk during the War of the Nine Realms and the Fourth Invasion.
Given that we were in the middle of a fairly bitter continent wide war until about a week before the invasion began in earnest, I think the realms allied up about as well as could be hoped. What went wrong was, in my view, a combination of overconfidence and a lack of leadership. The general opinion amongst the Rulers (with the obvious exception of Sint) seemed to be that we'd be able to hold our own for a couple of months at least. Needless to say... this wasn't the case and Heen, Alluran and Mesh were doomed within weeks. After that it became more of an "every man for himself" situation. None of the rulers stood up and offered any sort of plan on how to get through the invasion alive (or if they did, it was hopelessly tainted with self interest).
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The realms that weathered the storm best were either in the undead corner of the map, where the local invaders were inexplicably merciful compared to their southern and western counterparts,
Bwuahahaha... merciful. The undead. You've not seen the Beyond trailer yet, have you? Merciful. That made my day. Still laughing from that. Oh, dear creation.
Try: So cunning that even now you don't realize the full extent of their victory.
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Really enjoyed Aelradir's post. It's very interesting, especially as someone who had some power in Heen back in the third invasion. There actually was a strong effort to make Martana cut you adrift and turn on Sint for their alliance with daimonry but she managed to weather the storm and stay the course. She wasn't ready to risk daimonic assault and even as the invasion finished, she wasn't interested in punishing invasion transgressions.
It's also very interesting to see Tom's post about the daimons. Glad to know I wasn't wrong in opposing daimons from the Third Invasion but Beluaterra as a whole wasn't all that worried about daimonry. In the time between invasions I spent a lot of time decrying dragon worshippers and trying to help people see why Sint ought to have gone the way of Vlaanderen too but didn't get far. It was really frustrating to see Mesh talking about the Blood Cult and daimonry whilst forging an alliance with Sint, who had had daimon lords walking among them. Mesh seemed to be striking the wrong enemies and Sint's friends ought to have abandoned her. When daimons turned up again, I flexed every sinew in Bara'Khur to make them see daimons were the true enemy and that Bara'Khur had to work for the good of all human realms but ended up going into exile after failing utterly.
Even now, I stick to the view that the daimons were the real enemy, or at least no more a friend of humanity than any other faction, but most people seem to think I'm slightly mad. To some extent though, I wonder if the daimons had it easier due to the time between invasions. In some areas, there seemed to be surprisingly few veterans of the Third Invasion and even then, unless you were in the north-west the daimons weren't as life altering or fearsome as perhaps they could have been. What I remember and experienced of daimonry in the Third Invasion just didn't chime with the experience some people were having of daimons at the start of the Fourth and so it was very easy to write off those opposing daimonry as being ridiculous very early on.
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I think at this point it's fair to say that there were no "real" enemies, or rather, all enemies were quite real.
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I think at this point it's fair to say that there were no "real" enemies, or rather, all enemies were quite real.
It didn't help that many of the human realms saw the invaders at the outset as not so much allies, but creatures that could be used to their advantage.
I played as King of the Dominion of Alluran at the outset, later Duke of Fwuvoghor and General of the Meridian Republic. I worked with Duke Khaludh of Rines to create MR and Mordred was interested in seeing it created as well, so for anyone who still says that MR was purely opportunistic I'll remind them that there were two major factions, the Fwuvoghor remnants and the rest, both who wanted to play the invaders against each other whilst we could build up our strength to a point where we could more effectively fight back. There were fallouts with the monsters which didn't really eventuate into much because they suffered pretty badly from someone getting sick and inactive. At the end of the day most of the military action we saw was 1) when we took over the rogue regions of the isles and were attacked by the combined forces of Avalon and Bara'Khur and 2) when we had to defend our lands against the daimons who snuck past Fwuvoghor and teleported into our core food producing regions.
A fair bit of that is stuff I've said before, but I do notice MR still has a tarnished reputation from people who decided to wear themselves down on us before the monsters attacked them, as well as Riombarans who were angry to see a city of theirs leave. Haha man I'm such a broken record. To be fair I bailed out when the monsters ate most of Fwuvoghor's population and Celyn went crazy.
I think we needed to have allied with each other and faced the invaders much earlier in the war. Once they had claimed regions easily off realms like us in DoA they had that much more scope to recruit armies. We were told that the way to fight them was not necessarily with our own armies, but it always seemed to me that very few characters were willing to co-operate to work out what the other means may have been.
A lot of the time we either made the wrong assumption or wait you know what its 9:45pm and I have at least a hundred pages of crap to read and write an essay on and I feel like crap so ima cut this short.
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Bwuahahaha... merciful. The undead. You've not seen the Beyond trailer yet, have you? Merciful. That made my day. Still laughing from that. Oh, dear creation.
Try: So cunning that even now you don't realize the full extent of their victory.
Be that as it may, I can only assume that this is because they had other goals than mere conquest, goals they managed to fulfill in some way. I'm simply pointing out that of all the invaders, they were the only ones who did not destroy a single realm. With the exception of Thalmarkin, they didn't even really do that much permanent damage to any one realm. Even more than that, they let several realms off the hook when they could have destroyed them. Thalmarkin definitely, but also probably Melhed and OG.
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It didn't help that many of the human realms saw the invaders at the outset as not so much allies, but creatures that could be used to their advantage.
We totally lured them into that trap, though. All three factions had instructions from me to make it look like they could be used, and to make allies, and then betray them. They all did it in their own ways, but the basic message should've reached you by now that all three are inhuman and don't see humans as equals, so there can be no real alliances, except temporary alignments of goals.
Be that as it may, I can only assume that this is because they had other goals than mere conquest, goals they managed to fulfill in some way. I'm simply pointing out that of all the invaders, they were the only ones who did not destroy a single realm. With the exception of Thalmarkin, they didn't even really do that much permanent damage to any one realm. Even more than that, they let several realms off the hook when they could have destroyed them. Thalmarkin definitely, but also probably Melhed and OG.
Yes, they had other goals. And they reached them. Most of the bill is still open on that. But payday will come. After all, we have to have something for the 5th invasion, whatever form it may take.
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Ha, don't tell me that the entirety of Melhed and Old Grehk has doomed themselves to supply the Undead with corpses in agreeing to that elusive "Pact".
But you know, I don't think the Light really fulfilled its "ultimate" purpose, if it could be called that.
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Well, they certainly weren't very helpful. They mostly just inspired false hopes - Sint paid a huge price for sheltering one, and the first temple utterly failed to save Hetland. Of course that's only my character's perspective. They did allow Riombara to survive by protecting Grehk, but the power of the individual Temples was pretty worthless when the invaders could all replace armies far faster than the Temples could be used to destroy them. If they did ultimately cut off the flow of reinforcements to the invaders then perhaps they did serve a valuable purpose, but I saw little evidence of that in-character. Even after all three temples arose, the invaders kept coming, though it wasn't *too* long after that they finally tapered off.
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I'm pretty sure the humans never figured out how to use the temples properly. And you are right, individually they are pretty worthless... And they never were truly united, were they...? :-X
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I have no idea. My character didn't even have the slightest inkling that they could do more than they did. Certainly Gerontius never said anything about it where Evander could hear him.
That honestly was part of my problem with the invasion. There have been lots of interesting hints about things since it ended, but during the actual invasion it was virtually impossible to get any information that wasn't hopelessly tainted by enemy propaganda since the invaders themselves were (as far as I know) the only source of information. Other than the very broad and occasionally cryptic statements made by the prophets, that is, which I personally did not find to be useful. Mostly I found them to be dispensing warnings that were obsolete once the scope of the invaders' powers became clear.
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It is a bit too bad, though it does mean the NPCs were generally successful in deceiving humans, and that might not be a bad thing.
The Prophets said some things that got interpreted a variety of ways, which sounds about right. People tend to come up with lots of weird theories in the absence of clarity. Look at all the crazy speculations I've had about the 4th Inv on the BT boards, and multiply that by a bit to reflect the fact that there were many more interpretations floating around during the Invasion.
Those prophets were a bit too cryptic at times, and some of their sermons might have been twisted to reflect the strange motives of various humans. I especially liked the one about sacrificing honor, and the one about weaknesses in every fortress. Those got some pretty varied interpretations, I think.
However, as I reflect now with murky hindsight, I sometimes wonder if we had overlooked the roles of the commoners a bit too soon. As well, I wonder if we approached the initial invader factions too early, and instead should have had patience to await the arrival of the Light.
So, here's guess version...5 I think? Man, my guesses keep changing because I have no idea what's going on. Anyway, perhaps there was reason for the prophets preaching to the commonfolk, and the Light at first contacting commoners. Also, there must have been reason for those new books, although their true effects, I'm not sure. One adventurer has said that it appears fewer monsters/undead/daimons appear in a region after its use, and I wonder if that means it not only reduces the actual troops but also decreases the "hidden" resource value? With finite resources for the NPCs, the initial hordes would have been manageable if there were some serious concentrated effort...maybe? I don't know if the hunting would have been effective, but nothing suggests to me that the mechanics for gathering monsters and undead were different from the usual "resource" value for M/U that adventurers can estimate when investigating.
Still, that really doesn't solve the daimon problem, which is linked to a different value than the two distinct M/U values that already exist. Still, I feel strongly, and even went so far as to have Iksandros contact adventurers during the actual Invasion, that the adventurers were the key, not the nobles. Well, maybe not, but it would have been a most interesting twist in the irony of established human societal systems, that the ones who were considered the least could achieve the most while the ones who were considered the greatest could achieve the least.
As for the Light, they each "enchanted" three different faiths that were dedicated to combating the darkness. How they could have been activated for their great awesome effect, I have no clue, but it might have been hinted that such a method would have opened up the possibility of military resistance in earnest, much earlier than the arrival of archons.
But as with the Dream, those prophets to me are becoming a bit tricky to consider, because I am now having some doubts about their reliability. Just what visions were they seeing? What secret in the north could only be found in the south? Had it anything to do with the undead and monsters being two sides of the same coin? I guess they are kind of two sides in the adventurer's investigation, but now I'm just extending interpretation. Stretching hurts.
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From what I picked up during the invasion, I rather doubt that the monster/undead reinforcement rates were tied to the values that govern mundane undead and monster spawns. Unless those values are already linked behind the scenes to the factors that became evident during the invasion, which would be interesting...
The invading monsters ate people. They were like locusts. They'd move into a region, eat thousands of peasants overnight and have a shiny new army in the morning. The undead GM dropped hints that battle and death all over the continent contributed to his available reinforcements. Presumably this might have included peasants who died (of starvation for example... or of being eaten by monsters) in addition to soldiers. I never knew about the daimons, though I suppose their reinforcements came through portals to the netherworld or some such.
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I never knew about the daimons, though I suppose their reinforcements came through portals to the netherworld or some such.
I always suspected the daimons similarly had to use humans for fuel and in that regard, they set themselves up early on by devouring Heen and Mesh' lands in quick succession.
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Actually, the mundane values might have been linked quite a bit. Remember how (rogue) monster spawns appeared widespread during the Invasion, and (rogue) undead spawns became non-existent after a while? Also, recall how certain (rogue) undead spawns were disturbingly powerful even in small numbers, much smaller than any typical undead horde. That suggests to me that the "random" spawn rules got tweaked such that they were no longer governed by something like "At monster/undead value of X, spawn Y monsters/undead".
I have a feeling though, from one of the Prophets, that simply destroying them in battle would not have reduced the value appreciably. This is because I am pretty sure there's not a 1:1 correspondence between the value of the "resource" and the quantity of troops that can be gained from them. I'd guess that especially for undead, the ratio of undead recruited to resource available was very high, such that even if a couple thousand undead were defeated in pitched battle, the actual available resource wouldn't have suffered much of a dent.
And considering that every region has its own values for these things (I'm pretty sure everyone who's played an adventurer knows this by now), that means some places might still have a really high "resource" value.
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From what I remember, both types of mundane spawns were reduced during the invasion and the powerful rogue undead units didn't appear until after the invasion ended. It has been hinted on the D-list that this was a consequence of something achieved by the undead player during the invasion.
I will say that my shiny new adventurer was able to farm undead in a BT region for about a solid week alongside at least one other adventurer without running out just recently. From my last adventurer, I believe that's somewhat unusual, but I don't know for sure.
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Yes, they had other goals. And they reached them. Most of the bill is still open on that. But payday will come. After all, we have to have something for the 5th invasion, whatever form it may take.
"Something is always happening, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeuRAWSJGFY) but when it happens, people don't always see it, or understand it, or accept it."
But you know, I don't think the Light really fulfilled its "ultimate" purpose, if it could be called that.
I suppose that's possible, but then, what was the Light?
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I suppose that's possible, but then, what was the Light?
Beyond - if it ever sees the light of day, so to speak, will answer that question.
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Eh, I've been a fan of making up my own story for it, and seeing how long it takes before people realize it's not the "official canonical" version.
My highly strange improbably fantasy is that the Light was a conceptual power given more form than usual by the complex interaction between the power supplied by collective human consciousness focused in the transient world via the catalyst of faith, and the ambient dissociated "particles" of concepts floating about due to the interactions of the "darkness" extreme, aka the Invaders.
So in other words, the power of faith, given form, an opposite to that which gave origin to the triple divergent or perhaps convergent branches of darkness.
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Damn. And you were right all the time, too.
I think the Daimons were exceptionally well played, at least in parts. As were most of the other factions, in that they really got people convinced that they were friends. That was fantastic to see, the in-fighting amongst humans about which of their friends was the real friend and who'd just betray them in the end, when of course they all would.
Which the Blood Cult, and basically everyone in Enweil, perfectly understood. Nothing's black and white, and "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" played a major role in many's positions, as far as I can tell.
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Really enjoyed Aelradir's post. It's very interesting, especially as someone who had some power in Heen back in the third invasion. There actually was a strong effort to make Martana cut you adrift and turn on Sint for their alliance with daimonry but she managed to weather the storm and stay the course. She wasn't ready to risk daimonic assault and even as the invasion finished, she wasn't interested in punishing invasion transgressions.
It's also very interesting to see Tom's post about the daimons. Glad to know I wasn't wrong in opposing daimons from the Third Invasion but Beluaterra as a whole wasn't all that worried about daimonry. In the time between invasions I spent a lot of time decrying dragon worshippers and trying to help people see why Sint ought to have gone the way of Vlaanderen too but didn't get far. It was really frustrating to see Mesh talking about the Blood Cult and daimonry whilst forging an alliance with Sint, who had had daimon lords walking among them. Mesh seemed to be striking the wrong enemies and Sint's friends ought to have abandoned her. When daimons turned up again, I flexed every sinew in Bara'Khur to make them see daimons were the true enemy and that Bara'Khur had to work for the good of all human realms but ended up going into exile after failing utterly.
Even now, I stick to the view that the daimons were the real enemy, or at least no more a friend of humanity than any other faction, but most people seem to think I'm slightly mad. To some extent though, I wonder if the daimons had it easier due to the time between invasions. In some areas, there seemed to be surprisingly few veterans of the Third Invasion and even then, unless you were in the north-west the daimons weren't as life altering or fearsome as perhaps they could have been. What I remember and experienced of daimonry in the Third Invasion just didn't chime with the experience some people were having of daimons at the start of the Fourth and so it was very easy to write off those opposing daimonry as being ridiculous very early on.
Though with all due respect, Tom isn't the leader of the Blood Cult, nor does he play any of the elders it had, as far as I know. The Blood Cult were not servants of the daimons, though they were frequently allies of circumstance (example: Mesh persecutes the Cult and taunts the Daimons when they return. The Cult therefore turns to the daimons to have Mesh whacked. Result: Everyone's happy.).
The Daimons did leak propaganda through the Cult, but the Cult also managed to influence the daimons on many levels. And the Cult did *not* want the daimons to reign supreme, it simply tried to profit of the daimons' rampage to take care of many long-standing opponents. "Keep your friends close, your ennemies even closer" was a pretty dominant philosophy: "We'll rid ourselves of the daimons when we see the chance, but we'll profit from their presence to take care of all those that have been causing us such a pain for so long". It was payback time, really. The Cult always played with and against all sides.
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That sort of thinking might have been among the very things the daimons exploited. After all, everyone's a fool, and the biggest fools are those who think they are not the fools.
In all, the invaders really took advantage of human weaknesses, such as causing petty differences to fracture any potential cooperation, using a lot of deception to cause confusion and cast humans into doubt as to who is the "good guy" when in truth they were all pretty much "enemies" to humanity.
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That sort of thinking might have been among the very things the daimons exploited. After all, everyone's a fool, and the biggest fools are those who think they are not the fools.
In all, the invaders really took advantage of human weaknesses, such as causing petty differences to fracture any potential cooperation, using a lot of deception to cause confusion and cast humans into doubt as to who is the "good guy" when in truth they were all pretty much "enemies" to humanity.
What did they make me do I wouldn't otherwise have done? On the other hand, the list of things I've got them to do for me is quite long.
As for the Light, they were a bunch of douchebags. Even if the daimons had told me they were our salvation, along with all the prophets of the continent, I wouldn't have bought it. One just doesn't expect his saviours to be douchebags.
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You know, I get the feeling that the guys who played the daimons were laughing at you all through the Invasion. It's all past now though, so I'll drop the subject. You can go ahead and think whatever you'd like about being a mastermind manipulator, but the objective part is: you probably failed. The apparent answer by now should be clear that whatever it was you did was quite clearly on the wrong track, at least in terms of "complete" human victory. As it is now, we have a "victory" achieved solely by virtue of not being defeated, which is not much of a win at all.
Unfortunately due to the nature of the 4th Inv, and the interesting phenomenon whereby people think too hard about seemingly simple things and thus never get to the actual answer, we will probably never have a 100% good answer as to what happened. Oh well, I guess.
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Such alliances were necessary. If every realm had been defiant to the last and refused to make any alliances with the invaders, there wouldn't be any realms left. The invaders would have been forced to conquer every realm they encountered instead of what happened, which is that they destroyed some but allied with others and then fought each other to an extent, occasionally on behalf of their allies (or at least in ways that served to protect them).
In my opinion, the invaders were eminently capable of conquering the entire island. No human armies could have stood against them, even if every realm had willingly allied and devoted every effort to attacking the invaders. Does anyone seriously think that Mesh or Heen could have been saved? I seem to recall hearing about 100k CS concentrations of daimons at some points during the invasion. Their massive armies ensured fast takeovers, they had effectively limitless resources (from everything I was able to observe), and their units were nearly unbeatable. Sure, some monster and undead armies were defeated by humans alone at times, but the invaders never appeared to be scraping the bottom of the barrel recruitment-wise, and experience showed that even if you killed off the commanders, the GMs were allowed to create more characters. Each character was an army unto himself, capable of challenging all but the largest human forces. And they had quite a few characters.
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I think we went about this all wrong. What are we doing still thinking the initial stages had some sort of military resistance possibility? Let's ditch that thought because it is very likely that was completely off-base.
I think that adventurers were very important in the initial stages, and the prophets that talked about throwing away one's honor weren't talking about allying with the invaders, but recognizing commoners. Debate as you will.
Furthermore, and here's the kicker: I recall Tom even mentioning once on the Dlist about how realms were wasting time initially allying with NPCs instead of doing something more important.
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You know, I get the feeling that the guys who played the daimons were laughing at you all through the Invasion. It's all past now though, so I'll drop the subject. You can go ahead and think whatever you'd like about being a mastermind manipulator, but the objective part is: you probably failed. The apparent answer by now should be clear that whatever it was you did was quite clearly on the wrong track, at least in terms of "complete" human victory. As it is now, we have a "victory" achieved solely by virtue of not being defeated, which is not much of a win at all.
Unfortunately due to the nature of the 4th Inv, and the interesting phenomenon whereby people think too hard about seemingly simple things and thus never get to the actual answer, we will probably never have a 100% good answer as to what happened. Oh well, I guess.
They can think themselves master manipulators themselves all they want, it is what you seem to think they were, and what Tom is suggesting they were. I'm not saying I tricked them against their best interests. These days, I am more one to go with the flow... I might try to divert a river here and there, but I'm not trying to build any dams anymore. And you seem to believe I wanted a complete human victory myself... you REALLY should stop assuming you know what I did, why, and how.
I might have done a few things slightly differently, but even in the light of all I know now, I mostly would have done exactly the same. Spreading the lies I was shared served my own best interests, after all. It's no coincidence I was so eager to share them in the first place. A ravaged Beluaterra is exactly what I sought all along. Not destroyed, but not standing tall either. A handful of broken realms is a good playground.
One doesn't need all the secrets to get things done. Those who know or think they know more than the others should be less haughty about it, as those who know less aren't clueless idiots as a result. Not even everyone wanted the humans to survive, and among those who did, many different levels of "survival" were desired. One simply can't be so arrogant as to claim to know another's motivations and ambitions without the latter explicitely confessing them.
And I must really insist on the fact that the servants of the light were douchebags. Regardless of what all the invaders said, which my characters didn't really buy though they promoted it all over, the servants' actions, choices, and attitude is what determined my characters' stance on them, along with most of his peers'.
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They can think themselves master manipulators themselves all they want, it is what you seem to think they were, and what Tom is suggesting they were.
Not really. In fact, they were quite manipulative, including a successful infiltration (but not subversion, unfortunately) of the Blood Cult and a couple other religions, guilds and secret societies. We didn't just have the obvious GM characters, there were quite a few players with otherwise inconspicious families who had dedicated their Beluaterra character to an NPC role. But as they all were being played by essentially players, it would've been dumb to assume they were any better at that game.
They did have the advantage of inert cooperation (NPCs just don't suffer from infighting) and considerable resources. And I think they did quite well.
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Not really. In fact, they were quite manipulative, including a successful infiltration (but not subversion, unfortunately) of the Blood Cult and a couple other religions, guilds and secret societies. We didn't just have the obvious GM characters, there were quite a few players with otherwise inconspicious families who had dedicated their Beluaterra character to an NPC role. But as they all were being played by essentially players, it would've been dumb to assume they were any better at that game.
They did have the advantage of inert cooperation (NPCs just don't suffer from infighting) and considerable resources. And I think they did quite well.
Except that by the second half on the invasion, nobody other than myself really said anything in the Blood Cult, the notables mostly all being dead. It's hard to say the infiltrators managed to influence anyone when they didn't say a thing. And I did have a list in my mind of people who were obviously pro-daimon, they (or some of them) were rather easy to spot. Some characters and some families have overwhelming tendencies for such things, things I was not blind to.
I wasn't saying, nor will I say, that they were bad. I'm just not buying that they controlled the Blood Cult as some puppet as some statements suggest, as the leader of the said religion myself. By that time, the Cult's golden age was long gone anyways, its influence limited to a privileged channel of communication with the daimons in order to guide their action in return for various information or services, mostly to get them to sack all Daishi temples as payback for Daishi sacking many Blood Cult temples prior to the invasion, along with getting them to fight the monsters that plagued Enweil as often as possible.
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I find it annoying that you are boasting about how much more manipulative and smarter the NPC's were than the players, when this is exactly what people aren't looking for in something that is to be played like a friendly board game.
Assuming that you and the NPC's tricked all of us, when some of us might have been trying to play our characters based on IC information instead, is rather haughty of you.
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I find it annoying that you are boasting about how much more manipulative and smarter the NPC's were than the players, when this is exactly what people aren't looking for in something that is to be played like a friendly board game.
Assuming that you and the NPC's tricked all of us, when some of us might have been trying to play our characters based on IC information instead, is rather haughty of you.
You also have to take into account that Chénier fails the first rule of manipulation. He believes his own propaganda. ;P
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I was talking about Tom, but ok.
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I find it annoying that you are boasting about how much more manipulative and smarter the NPC's were than the players, when this is exactly what people aren't looking for in something that is to be played like a friendly board game.
Assuming that you and the NPC's tricked all of us, when some of us might have been trying to play our characters based on IC information instead, is rather haughty of you.
You have never played DnD, GURPS, Exalted, or any other pen-and-paper RPGs, have you?
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You have never played DnD, GURPS, Exalted, or any other pen-and-paper RPGs, have you?
I loved the way the daimons where played, thats how I play BM and thats how any rpg should be played.
But as like with dnd, alot of players who play it seem not to understand that.
The most fun situations came out of a party member betraying his very own party.
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I find it annoying that you are boasting about how much more manipulative and smarter the NPC's were than the players, when this is exactly what people aren't looking for in something that is to be played like a friendly board game.
Assuming that you and the NPC's tricked all of us, when some of us might have been trying to play our characters based on IC information instead, is rather haughty of you.
I don't quite follow. Playing a game with friends doesn't mean I can't trick them. It's the spirit that counts. Tricking them so everyone can have a laugh about it when it comes out is a different thing. Tricking characters and not necesarily players is also important.
And I don't think I ever said smarter or more manipulative. Sorry if I sounded like that. I was trying to point out that the NPCs brought more to the game than just sheer numbers of military troops. And, as we've seen in this thread, both sides have tried to play the other, so I think it's all fair in the end. :-)
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I don't quite follow. Playing a game with friends doesn't mean I can't trick them. It's the spirit that counts. Tricking them so everyone can have a laugh about it when it comes out is a different thing. Tricking characters and not necesarily players is also important.
And I don't think I ever said smarter or more manipulative. Sorry if I sounded like that. I was trying to point out that the NPCs brought more to the game than just sheer numbers of military troops. And, as we've seen in this thread, both sides have tried to play the other, so I think it's all fair in the end. :-)
Tricking people is fine. Stating that you tricked people also is. While I realize that wasn't your intent, some of your previous statements, along with some of Artemesia's, were more along the lines of "some people [such as the Blood Cult] were total tools and we totally molded their minds to our will". Notably when you said that all of Mesh' accusations were true, when I, as the leader of the Blood Cult, would have put extreme relativity on a lot of the accusations. For example, they said they persecuted the Cult because it wanted to help the daimons. On the other hand, I'd say the Cult helped the daimons because Mesh and Hetland persecuted it and it wanted some payback. The actions were the same, but not the reasoning behind them, and the reasons influenced how the cooperation was done and were a big part of the debate.
As for Gustav's comment, it goes along these lines. OOC, I had serious doubts that the Light was there to save us, regardless of what the daimons said as I knew that if it was the case, the daimons and the others would lie about the Light in order to protect themselves. However, IC, they were total douchebags. I couldn't bring myself to act IC contrary to IC info and therefore on OOC motives only. But I dreaded myself every time I acted on that IC information, fearing I might lose my favorite continent because of it. So I kept playing with a very negative attitude towards the Light, more because of what they said themselves than what others said on them though, while OOC very well knowing that my character was likely not on the right path.
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I don't quite follow. Playing a game with friends doesn't mean I can't trick them. It's the spirit that counts. Tricking them so everyone can have a laugh about it when it comes out is a different thing. Tricking characters and not necesarily players is also important.
And I don't think I ever said smarter or more manipulative. Sorry if I sounded like that. I was trying to point out that the NPCs brought more to the game than just sheer numbers of military troops. And, as we've seen in this thread, both sides have tried to play the other, so I think it's all fair in the end. :-)
I didn't say you couldn't trick people and laugh about it. It was just that you had what I read as an arrogant tone that implied we were dunces for falling for something obvious.
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It was just that you had what I read as an arrogant tone that implied we were dunces for falling for something obvious.
Then you read wrong. What he said was that the NPCs were played very, very well, even in spite of any mistakes. You don't call a player stupid for following a GM's plot hook, and that certainly is not what Tom said.
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It still means he should have given his words a lookover, as I was not the only one who read negativity in them. I'm not saying he meant to be mean or arrogant, that was just the tone.
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For reference, I think these two posts are the ones who caused irritation:
Damn. And you were right all the time, too.
(as it was a reply to a few posts in which Mesh justified persecution on the Cult, where many accusations were made)
Bwuahahaha... merciful. The undead. You've not seen the Beyond trailer yet, have you? Merciful. That made my day. Still laughing from that. Oh, dear creation.
Try: So cunning that even now you don't realize the full extent of their victory.
(This second one especially, came out as a bit much)
It's all good with me at this point, though, just want to make sure everyone's talking about the same thing.
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So Tom takes pride in bringing us hours of fun by creating an awesome invasion that was in my opinion very enjoyable and one of the best there has been if not the best. I don't see anything arrogant or wrong about that.
Personally, I've actively played in all invasions and I find it difficult to decide which was the best one: the first or the fourth. The first had vampire lords and giant frogs roaming around and the fourth had a real story and had those of us involved sitting at the edge of our seat during the entire thing, struggling to cling on to life. At least that was my experience, playing in Thalmarkin and Riombara (both realms that stood on the brink of destruction for a long time because they refused to ally with the invaders).
I don't care if the NPCs tricked anyone, I mean... imagine yourself as your character: giant beasts and walking corpses suddenly appear and start rampaging across human lands, would you believe what they have to say? I know that I, as a human being, would at least be a little wary of them..
Of course the invaders try to trick you and don't want mankind to be victorious, it's what they're there for and I think that was even pretty obvious judging from their actions - not their words.
You've imagined being your character, now imagine being Tom and seeing how even when facing terrible odds - which you designed - humans still remain true to their nature, even in a game. I think it's a pretty normal reaction of him - or anyone who has the same information he has - and not arrogant at all.
In short: they can only trick the player if you're playing from the player's perspective. So hide behind your character and you're safe.
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Yeah, I have that sometimes. You'll have to learn to live with it, because even though I do look my words over, in the words of someone else "you have to be somehow", and that's just part of how I am.
And, don't get me wrong, you all were misled by the Undead. Which is pretty cool, because otherwise I wouldn't have a story for Beyond. And heck, all three NPC factions tried, so if the players only fell for one, and that only in parts, that's a darn good job.
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Hi,
Apologies for bringing up this old post and perhaps going slightly off topic (I guess the mod can mess things up if he feels this is done for real). I ran into this post a bit randomly cause I didn't really read the BT forum up to now. Reading bits of it here and there one question came up to me naturally: how exactly do you guys know so much?
I mean, besides Tom and those that played the various factions, there seem to be quite some people arguing about things done in the invasion to an extent that leaves me wondering. I had a char during the entire invasion, first in fronen then in the meridian republic. An infiltrator. And I must say that I didn't have the slightest idea what the hell was going on from the very first to the very last day of the invasion. I saw the various faction raising, destroying almost everything, slowing down after a while and then vanishing leaving the blight behind. Fielding at first enough strength to wipe out basically everything and then not doing it for unknown reasons.
Confronting my experience of the 4th invasion to what I read here I am incredibly surprised at the amount of things I lost and that apparently made the invasion way more interesting than I could see. Completely.
Now, I do not mean this post to be a critic to the invasion or anything, but I was just wondering if the problem was me and my lack of commitment to gather informations on what was going on somehow (I really didn't check the wiki so much and didn't play the dream) or whether I just had the bad luck of being in the wrong realms and with a char that was not well connected. It goes without saying that something like the 4th invasion is certainly more entertaining for highly ranked and well connected characters, but I just want to know whether "regular" nobles could enjoy -and thus I was a bit the exception- or not. Maybe you can help me answering this question :)
cheers
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Speculation. Wild guesses at worst, and serendipitously somewhat accurate guesses at best. Only the ones involved in the actual Invasion planning know the real story, or perhaps not even they know the entire big picture. Maybe only the original author of it all knows. But then again, in some stories, the tale becomes larger than the author.
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And I must say that I didn't have the slightest idea what the hell was going on from the very first to the very last day of the invasion. I saw the various faction raising, destroying almost everything, slowing down after a while and then vanishing leaving the blight behind. Fielding at first enough strength to wipe out basically everything and then not doing it for unknown reasons.
Confronting my experience of the 4th invasion to what I read here I am incredibly surprised at the amount of things I lost and that apparently made the invasion way more interesting than I could see. Completely...
...I just want to know whether "regular" nobles could enjoy -and thus I was a bit the exception- or not. Maybe you can help me answering this question :)
This was more or less my experience. I wouldn't call my character well-connected, but he was a general for a substantial portion of the invasion. Personally, I suspect your experience was more or less the norm.
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Speculation. Wild guesses at worst, and serendipitously somewhat accurate guesses at best. Only the ones involved in the actual Invasion planning know the real story, or perhaps not even they know the entire big picture. Maybe only the original author of it all knows. But then again, in some stories, the tale becomes larger than the author.
The tale becoming larger than the author is rarer than people giving up and the tale becoming forgotten.
Everyone likes a narrative conclusion. I feel like the DM won and still won't give up his secrets when you punch him while eating pizza afterwards.
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That might be because the DM in this case prepared some follow-up material to serve as an epilogue of sorts where all secrets might be revealed.
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Everyone likes a narrative conclusion. I feel like the DM won and still won't give up his secrets when you punch him while eating pizza afterwards.
If one assumes the story is complete, that would make sense.
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We should take a poll to see how many "active" members even care whether the story continues.
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We should take a poll to see how many "active" members even care whether the story continues.
That's a little harsh I feel, considering the work that probably went into developing it, but I have to say that my investment in the story is quite minimal.
The consequences of said story certainly have a daily impact on my BT characters in the form of hard realities like the blight and the undead spawns, but the story was so obscure and hard to piece together that I can't really say that I'm invested enough in it to care. My characters know almost nothing of consequence, and I know only marginally more.
Perhaps those players who had the time and inclination to dig deep into the story and rumors that surrounded it might feel differently, but I suspect that such people are a relatively small minority of the player base.
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Harsh, I guess, but I have a sinking feeling that it might not be far from the fact that many players might have simply thrown their hands up and said something like "Screw this! I'm just gonna do whatever and hope for the best."
Add to that the myriad of lies and deceit, both coming in the main game as well as in The Dream (which really should have been expected), along with the rumors and twists that humans include naturally, you have a story that reads like Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves minus the colorful text and bizarre typography.
That doesn't mean the story had to be simple, and I know very well that there was a lot of effort put into this. Unfortunately I think that a consequence of the reactions to presentation was that there was a lot of initial curiosity, then frustration, then some wrong twists, followed finally by reluctant acceptance that there was no answer in sight. And even if anyone did get to the right answer, they'd never know anyway (Until presumably Beyond comes out or something. Though if that does the unreliable narrator trick as in The Dream...Agatha Christie wasn't even immune to her readers getting angry about that stunt in more than one of her novels).
So much as I would like to think that people were really interested in 4th Inv, and by my involvement in these threads, I certainly was, as well as possibly some others, I think in large part players involved don't care too much about the story behind it all anymore, possibly more or less like their characters. They are probably more concerned about how to deal with the blight, and why undead were/are popping up more. The practical aspects, which realistically is probably what happens among humans after a calamity.
Also, for future reference, in general, humans really are that stupid, in case some things we did during the 4th Inv made foreheads meet palms.
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Well, I really enjoy the mystery. I also really enjoy building beliefs that I know are wrong for characters and the invasion gave us something wierd to consider. It really helped me flesh out a worldview for one of my characters, which challanged his fundemental assumptions about the world.
Though I think that if you don't enjoy the theology/priest game you might not have gotten to be part of the "what the hell?" "X, no, Y, no the incarnated goddess!" sort of discussions. Really, if I didn't have a dutchy to run I would be sorely pressed (now that it looks like the Tonkotsu cult has folded) to make a blight cult focusing on the Undead. The problem is that players really don't often want to set their characters up to be proven terribly, horribly wrong.
Still, any excuse to chain a zombie Orge in your cellar is a win in my books.
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Still, any excuse to chain a zombie Orge in your cellar is a win in my books.
There were no zombie ogres, unfortunately.
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Not yet, well, except for the one in Reeds which may not be a zombie or an ogre.
Once we get the armour bolted on and figure out some way to resurrect Tonkotsu using blood sacrifices and...uh...maybe some mercury mixed with gold mixed with platnium, we'll be all good for our religious needs as we can finally have a living diety in a proper all powerful shell "All-Powerful(tm) specifically excludes falling apart due to necrosis, worms, general rot, or citizens with fire. Not to be used in public. Insane Blood Cultists ltd. does not take any responsability for none of this working at all as planned."
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The Bara'Khur/Nothoi area appears to be the worst position on Beluaterra right now. Cities and mountains, and maybe at most three rural regions, means difficult means to feed the regions. Add to that the fact that the entire western and southern borders are pretty much blighted regions.
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Harsh, I guess, but I have a sinking feeling that it might not be far from the fact that many players might have simply thrown their hands up and said something like "Screw this! I'm just gonna do whatever and hope for the best."
From the echoes I got, I'd say this is/was predominant.
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Harsh, I guess, but I have a sinking feeling that it might not be far from the fact that many players might have simply thrown their hands up and said something like "Screw this! I'm just gonna do whatever and hope for the best."
That's pretty much what I did, anyway.
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Oh hells yes. It shouldn't even have been formed except for a fit of pique by a Duke who was high on opiates at the time.
That and he was sick of the beurocrats nosing around, some of them even said that experimenting on his household staff was wrong! Which he did not even do (because he can't fend for himself at all).
Nothoi and Bara'Khur are very different however, and Nothoi at least has some nobles and a willingness to fight anyone over peanuts (by fight, I mean duel due to the lack of a meaningful army). One thing about BM though, spunk counts for a whole lot more then you'd expect.
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Yeah...I'm just going to see how long Bara'Khur sticks around with a starving Dyomoque, and how long Nothoi plans to stick to its :o style of...government (?).
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Probably until Solips gets himself killed or deported.
Then it's either Schrezer, Kraft, or Reston and only Kraft is really likely to keep it a madhouse.
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Yeah...I'm just going to see how long Bara'Khur sticks around with a starving Dyomoque, and how long Nothoi plans to stick to its :o style of...government (?).
I'm intrigued. What is their style of government like?
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More like "lack of". If I remember correctly, it was some sort of almost extremist "free state" deal, with either monthly or quarterly elections for the council, weak power for the ruler, strong power for the judge, and probably balanced for the others, not as if that means anything.
The lords and dukes are appointed though. Also, they make a really big deal about being free or something. Did I mention that they are among the least self-sustainable realms...wait, make that the least self-sustainable realm on the continent? Democracy isn't exactly a good government style to use in BM when you need some serious and swift action to deal with the blight that's on the west and south borders.
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More like "lack of". If I remember correctly, it was some sort of almost extremist "free state" deal, with either monthly or quarterly elections for the council, weak power for the ruler, strong power for the judge, and probably balanced for the others, not as if that means anything.
The lords and dukes are appointed though. Also, they make a really big deal about being free or something. Did I mention that they are among the least self-sustainable realms...wait, make that the least self-sustainable realm on the continent? Democracy isn't exactly a good government style to use in BM when you need some serious and swift action to deal with the blight that's on the west and south borders.
I wouldn't think that a "democracy" would appoint their lords. If it truly is an anarchistic every-man-for-himself society, it could be interesting, but it sounds pretty feudal-authoritarian to me. Weak government, strong Dukes who can control the Judge by making appointments conditional on voting the way you want them to.
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It's more like one duke, who isn't exactly that qualified, if sanity and/or rooted in reality is a condition. There's only one duchy: Reeds. The regions are mountains, plus one rural and one townsland I believe. There is also this freedom of religion thing, so I think sometime sooner or later Hemaism could take out Reeds, unless Daishi makes a comeback there first.
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Or the blood cult. Really hoping for them to make a presence there.
Solips is qualified, he just doesn't have any real interest in ruling or doing much of anything beyond his attempts to achieve immortality/break through existance/create the philosopher's stone. I actually have no idea why anyone lets him be Duke, or why they made him a Duke in the first place. It's not like he made his drug addiction a secret, and his only claim to fame was trying to kill two realm-mates during the fourth invasion, obstensibly because they were...
I'm not really sure. I know it made sense to him at the time. When you have to actually enjoin your sole Duke to not murder ambassadors or members of his own realm on a "hunch" you might want to have a new Duke.
Nothoi is actually closest to 1300s Florence, which was outwardly free and liberal but inwardly couldn't get its !@#$ together to save its life.
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Or the blood cult. Really hoping for them to make a presence there.
Solips is qualified, he just doesn't have any real interest in ruling or doing much of anything beyond his attempts to achieve immortality/break through existance/create the philosopher's stone. I actually have no idea why anyone lets him be Duke, or why they made him a Duke in the first place. It's not like he made his drug addiction a secret, and his only claim to fame was trying to kill two realm-mates during the fourth invasion, obstensibly because they were...
I'm not really sure. I know it made sense to him at the time. When you have to actually enjoin your sole Duke to not murder ambassadors or members of his own realm on a "hunch" you might want to have a new Duke.
Nothoi is actually closest to 1300s Florence, which was outwardly free and liberal but inwardly couldn't get its !@#$ together to save its life.
The Blood Cult is no more, I shut it down. I have plans for another religion, but at the rate its going, it's probably going to be an informal one without game-mechanic backing.
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damn... what am i going to use to blame enweil for everything?
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Eretzism. That's Enweil's real religion I think.
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Eretzism. That's Enweil's real religion I think.
It's the thing we decorate our walls with, pretty much.
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well... i just assume it's like the blood cult's little brother anyway XD (like how it's used in wars, etc)
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well... i just assume it's like the blood cult's little brother anyway XD (like how it's used in wars, etc)
Uh...?
I can't see a single resemblance between the two, other than they both had support in Enweil (in which case, the Cult would be most religions' big brothers for having spread to most realms at one point or another in time).
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Eretizism is a tool of the Enweilian government. This was the reason given for its founding when it was created, and was one of the primary reasons Fwuvoghor seceeded from Enweil all those years ago.
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in the way both were seen/or at least depicted as extension of enweil by some.
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Before the invasion, Nicolas was very much the public face of Enweil and known to be a Blood Cult Elder. So it was was pretty easy for the anti-Enweil forces and the anti-Blood Cult forces to link the two together in order to gain support for their respective objectives.
From an outsiders perspective, I saw the BC as an influential, but not dominant, faction within Enweil's government. Generally what benefitted one benefitted the other.
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An extension of Enweil? Amusing, considering it didn't gain any influence in Enweil until the later days. And that it was *Fronen*'s state religion since its founding, pretty much, and that's where the Cult had the most followers and temples, and launched most of their activities from.
Also, Nicolas was not an elder of the Blood Cult. A very prominent and influential member, yes, moreso than its actual elders of the time I'd say, but he was still holder of but a full member rank.
To view the Cult as an extension of Enweil is a gross misunderstanding of the place the Cult held in Beluaterra. Enweil was one of the last places it settled in, where it gained support from but a minority. Eretzism even declared it evil, for a while. However, that minority included the very influential Nicolas Chénier and a handful of very loyal and active young supporters to his cause, as well as a few immigrants of experience that came from outside of Enweil. Apathy towards the Cult is what allowed it to push its agenda in Enweil so much, as there wasn't really any other agenda to oppose Nicolas'. It was a symbiotic relation, mostly, though close to parasitic at times. Enweil was pretty much wandering around aimlessly before I came along, without any plans or desire to shake things up. When Nicolas came along, he firmly believed that if Enweil did not use its power, it would lose it. And he managed to convince a bunch of others, and most of the rest followed, only a tiny minority really opposing what he was pushing for. And eventually, he manged to use Enweil to punish all those who persecuted him and the Cult.
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that's not the point
... from a character who only sees invasion by enweil, blood cultists, eretzism and daimons led by some character with ties to one or more of the 3, then they are basically the same thing.
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Isn't that rather disingenuous? If that's your reasoning, you might as well say the monsters, undead, and daimons were all the same thing because they had ties to one another, which is clearly complete crap.
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Isn't that rather disingenuous? If that's your reasoning, you might as well say the monsters, undead, and daimons were all the same thing because they had ties to one another, which is clearly complete crap.
Quite. It's basically like saying that my protestant neighbor is clearly a pedophile, because there were many reports of pedophile catholic priests, and Catholicism and protestantism are both christian, and that he's part of one of these.
It's quite absurd. You need to really be weak-minded and short-sighted to think this... The Blood Cult was the most independent faith of its times, and only aided other parties (be them realms, like Enweil, or NPCs, like daimons) when it served their own agenda. Everything was done with the intent of wiping off every non-cultist faiths from the map, starting with the actively hostile ones, but eventually very well including Eretzism for which it had no love (but which attacking would be counter-productive, and which would have broken with the policy of letting others be as we build ourselves up, unless attacked first).
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Quite. It's basically like saying that my protestant neighbor is clearly a pedophile, because there were many reports of pedophile catholic priests, and Catholicism and protestantism are both christian, and that he's part of one of these.
It's quite absurd. You need to really be weak-minded and short-sighted to think this... The Blood Cult was the most independent faith of its times, and only aided other parties (be them realms, like Enweil, or NPCs, like daimons) when it served their own agenda. Everything was done with the intent of wiping off every non-cultist faiths from the map, starting with the actively hostile ones, but eventually very well including Eretzism for which it had no love (but which attacking would be counter-productive, and which would have broken with the policy of letting others be as we build ourselves up, unless attacked first).
We are RPing medieval nobles. Being weak minded is probably the norm really. Also is probably closer to thinking all Muslims are terrorist because a few have chosen that path in order to fight against what they see as injustices against their faith. Or thinking that the goal of all Christians is to convert the "poor stupid fools" to the one true religion, just because the evangelist movements are so visible. We lump large groups of people together unfairly all the time. We still do it today even though in real terms awareness of such issues should be MUCH greater. Given the time period we are playing such things I would think are very acceptable.
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Look at our "democracy": most people are still weak-minded and short-sighted... The only difference with medieval times is that today everybody thinks they have a valid opinion :P
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Yes, they had other goals. And they reached them. Most of the bill is still open on that. But payday will come. After all, we have to have something for the 5th invasion, whatever form it may take.
How about this, the Blight lifts and all the humans march through Jobbo's Mouth to invade the Daimon dimension? XD
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Then we all die because we cannot breathe there. ;)
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lol, I asked once. Basically we'd combust to ashes.
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lol, I asked once. Basically we'd combust to ashes.
Are you basing that on something Prudent's player said? Anything Prudent said should be considered non-canon to the invasion, or to have been signs of the character's insanity.
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Cimmerian.
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Definitely a more reliable sources.
Anyway, didn't the messages you got when trying to move into the Blight make it clear that if you didn't turn back, you's die? I think that applied to the blight from all three sources, too. Before you could manage to mount an expedition into the blight, you'd need to find some way to combat those effects.
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I was talking about after the Blight had gone.
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If ever. Come to think of it, anyone here played Okami? It is indeed relevant to this talk of Blight!
Besides, the Blight is all generic now. The daimons have disappeared to their world, the monsters have gone back to their lands or perhaps integrated with the wild beasts, and the undead have returned unto death, for the most part. At least, the leaders are all gone, and no daimons remain on Beluaterra.
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Quite. It's basically like saying that my protestant neighbor is clearly a pedophile, because there were many reports of pedophile catholic priests, and Catholicism and protestantism are both christian, and that he's part of one of these.
It's quite absurd. You need to really be weak-minded and short-sighted to think this... The Blood Cult was the most independent faith of its times
I think you're the one missing the point a little bit. That's your own insiders perspective. Iltaran's touched upon the truth of things, but let me expand. Most Beluaterran outsiders see/saw the Blood Cult as an influential faction in Enweil. This was helped very much by the actions of Mesh. Indeed, when I actually got one of my characters to Mesh and became ruler there, I was totally unprepared for the strength of feeling on the matter. They hated the Cult.
I'm not disputing that the Blood Cult was powerful/well spread/influential etc. But over a period of years Mesh and others very successfully smeared the Blood Cult. The Blood Cult itself did little to help it's cause. Consider things like founding a theocracy in Athol Margos during an Enweilian campaign in Riombara. Plenty linked the Cult and Enweil together.
You mentioned Fronen, but they don't/didn't really have any strong personalities at all. The Blood Cult might have been active there, but you didn't hear about it or come across any of it. When there was the big Grehk/Fronen war Mesh was moaning about Cultists there but no-one cared as you hardly knew they existed. No-one listened because to most minds, the Cult was already one with Enweil.
It's always been the House of Chenier whose name has been in various states of repute/disrepute as a Cultist throughout Beluaterra. And where has the House of Chenier been active most in Beluaterra? For how long has a Chenier been either General/Ruler of Enweil? In that sense, it's always come across very strongly that the Cult has a big power base in Enweil and that Enweil happily supports Cultists.
You can say what you want, but my Beluaterra char has definitely spent the last four years or so associating the Blood Cult most strongly with Enweil.
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I was talking about after the Blight had gone.
The blight is an extension of the actual invaders' homes. i.e. the "blight" was assuming the metaphysical properties of a completely different plane of existence. Even if the blight ever lifts, the invaders' home planes would remain inimical to human life. Entering such a place unprotected would still result in your immediate death. As I said, if you wanted to "invade the invaders" you would have to find some way to stay alive in such a hostile environment.
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The blight is an extension of the actual invaders' homes. i.e. the "blight" was assuming the metaphysical properties of a completely different plane of existence. Even if the blight ever lifts, the invaders' home planes would remain inimical to human life. Entering such a place unprotected would still result in your immediate death. As I said, if you wanted to "invade the invaders" you would have to find some way to stay alive in such a hostile environment.
I don't think there is, but who knows.
Many stuff has been proven not to work.
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Isn't that rather disingenuous? If that's your reasoning, you might as well say the monsters, undead, and daimons were all the same thing because they had ties to one another, which is clearly complete crap.
not when the mentioned acted together to laid waste to a number of regions. hatred is not necessarily rational.
it's not like you don't see that kind of prejudice happening irl.
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I think you're the one missing the point a little bit. That's your own insiders perspective. Iltaran's touched upon the truth of things, but let me expand. Most Beluaterran outsiders see/saw the Blood Cult as an influential faction in Enweil. This was helped very much by the actions of Mesh. Indeed, when I actually got one of my characters to Mesh and became ruler there, I was totally unprepared for the strength of feeling on the matter. They hated the Cult.
I'm not disputing that the Blood Cult was powerful/well spread/influential etc. But over a period of years Mesh and others very successfully smeared the Blood Cult. The Blood Cult itself did little to help it's cause. Consider things like founding a theocracy in Athol Margos during an Enweilian campaign in Riombara. Plenty linked the Cult and Enweil together.
You mentioned Fronen, but they don't/didn't really have any strong personalities at all. The Blood Cult might have been active there, but you didn't hear about it or come across any of it. When there was the big Grehk/Fronen war Mesh was moaning about Cultists there but no-one cared as you hardly knew they existed. No-one listened because to most minds, the Cult was already one with Enweil.
It's always been the House of Chenier whose name has been in various states of repute/disrepute as a Cultist throughout Beluaterra. And where has the House of Chenier been active most in Beluaterra? For how long has a Chenier been either General/Ruler of Enweil? In that sense, it's always come across very strongly that the Cult has a big power base in Enweil and that Enweil happily supports Cultists.
You can say what you want, but my Beluaterra char has definitely spent the last four years or so associating the Blood Cult most strongly with Enweil.
I'd bring a few nuances to the interesting points you bring forth.
First, the cultists in Enweil wanted you to hate Enweil. Secondly, many who hated Enweil wanted you to hate the Cult. It's a conflict (factions of) both parties wanted. In the end, before the invasion, the Blood Cult had managed to sway the whole continent into a huge multi-front war, which basically consisted of the anti-cult realms (and their friends) and those more tolerant or supportive of the Cult. And this was done because it was considered that the second faction was stronger, and that so after a long and destructive war, the anti-cult factions would be decimated. It wasn't a lopsided conflict, but the conflict on most fronts was either favorable to us or in a stalemate, so it was calculated that those who win their wars could then be re-directed at tie-breakers on other fronts.
That's why Fronen didn't show up in the debate as much. Their government was much less vocally militant, but for the greater part of the Cult's history, that's where all the elders were concentrated. When the Cultist priests tore down the Republic of Fwuvoghor near the end, most of them were based in Fronen, knowing full well that RoF could not afford to declare war on Fronen (as it would give an excuse for its military to come in) and that therefore they could operate with impunity. If you read up the Cult's RP archives, you'll see most of the radical stuff is from Fronenites. Or mostly everyone other than Enweilians, who were generally rather tame.
And the Athol Margos colony was actually established by the prophet who had, until then, lived in Melhed for a very long time. It was a secession from Melhed, and maintained awkward links with it for the duration of its short life. Really, the Blood Cult in Enweil was just 1 noble for the longest time. :P