Messages

Sorry for not commenting sooner! I like it, quite a bit. The style you went for was very much legend-y, but also somewhat personal. I don't think the story needs any changing or anything, except maybe just more strongly implying that you are creating the plants and all that stuff-- if that is what it is.

Correct, he packaged them into chloroplasts/algae.

I like it as well. But for a story like this, how does the next person continue this story on?

The next chapter would be how it spreads up onto the land? How ferns/trees/bushes etc formed. Right now it's just green. Somehow the brown of the mud/earth is going to hold it up into the sky somehow for some reason.

No comments? Really?

When the earth had separated itself from the water, and the air from them both to fly high in the sky, and above them all the fires of the heavens, the oceans were dark and hard with white capped waves that crashed against the dull grey and brown mottled rocks of the earth. The air would sometimes dance with the fires in the sky and create fantastic yellows and reds and purples that would streak across the wondrous blue that reflected the color of the ocean. Yet there was no green in all the world for it had yet to know it could exist.

Riding down a pillar of fire to a place where the sea and the earth meet came the Nameless Wanderer. Now where the pillar touched down, there happened to be a reddish brown metal baked into the rocks and so hot was the flame of the heavens that bore the wanderer to the new world that it caused the rock to catch alight with newfound flame. But unlike any other flame in all of existence, this one burned green!

So great was the delight of the wanderer at this spectacle that he leaped for joy into the air in great bounds, bringing with him the spray of the sea, and the burning rocks of the land into the sky with him for all the world to see. With outstretched arm he plucked from the heavens the yellows and oranges and reds, and created the first of all rainbows. However, now that it existed the color green had no place to go and this deeply saddened the wanderer, and so he swept up as much of this first green that he could and he packed it tightly, smaller than any mortal eye could ever see and spread it down upon the surface of the earth wherever the sea, the earth, and the sky met. And there did it grow and multiply, spreading across the lands as a blanket of verdant color, and so too did it slip into the shallows of the seas where light still trickles down to the sandy bottom. For this was the first combination of the elements and there was nothing to hold back its exuberance, save the need for the warmth of the fires of heaven, the nourishing water of the seas, and the stable bedrock of the earth.

"It is said that the man-of-the-thousand-faces doesn't know their own true identity, and that none of the mortal kin have never nor will ever hear sweet words of the true knowledge of their being part lips and bring wonder to beknighted ears that. As such man-of-the-thousand-faces is the Nameless, a hopeless wanderer who is the truest of all Makers. While others seek to name all that is, the Nameless knows that this is a work of evil. For in so naming a thing it puts constraints on its potential to be and to become; to forever close off the potential of it's yet becoming something greater than it already is. With endless possibility the nameless does not fetter themselves with constraints of time or place, they can be many things at once. The tree on the nearby hill, the man who sits in its shade, and the sun in the sky bringing warmth to the world. But men cannot speak to the tree on a hill, or the sun in the sky, and so they must content themselves to seeing the vision of the man-of-the-thousand-faces in themselves and in eachother. For wherever there is the vision to create new what has never been seen nor done before, there is the power of the awesome truth that the nameless one has brought to the people, and so too is there the nameless' blessing. So go into the world and bring with you his mark of the open circle, and incorporate it into all that you do for the unfinished work will always leave open possibilities for the future," the man in a plain tan cassock finishes saying as he steps off the rock and waves to the trees in a wilderness populated only by the beasts of the land, for men have yet to step foot in these lands. But, when they do, the trees will whisper this truth to the young boys who play in their shade, the stream shall gurgle its message to the girls who fetch water for their mother's, and the old shall come to know it in its entirety when they are laid to rest in its soil.

and loren was sending letters to literally everyone. I think that made things very obvious.

I was duped! Damnit Tom.  >:(

Fantastic Tom! Glad to see you're ready to show everyone else what you've been working on alongside the Conquest game. All that time with Unity is really paying off in spades.

Any idea if we'll be able to get some servers of the game running. I know Unity has its own netcode baked in. Would love to actually be able to work together to take down the big snarling monster, or Skeleton King.

Interesting that a region defected from Sirion at the start of all of this, does anybody think more defections are in order?  Also, as somebody who had a different family from long ago, but is generally fairly new... why hasn't there been a secession of a duchy in Sirion?  I would imagine in such a big realm it would be bound to happen eventually, especially at times like this when Sirion would be unable to quell the new realm effectively.

You're unlikely to see more defections. It's also going to get much much harder to get into Sirion once they lose Oligarch. Avamar and Trinbar are ridiculously defensible. The outer-lying cities were always incredibly vulnerable. The only real way to defend them was what happend back in the day with the Fontan-Sirion-OR alliance.

Actually that also makes you more likely to betray your own realm to keep your city. Because you probably think you've earned it. That is why most realms don't appoint their less trusted dukes into outer cities where it is easier to defect. Giselle, Duchess of Krimml, was probably a mistake on their part. Her family has a long history with that but sometimes you forget.

Long history huh? So there was Serko in Topenah(?) on FEI, and then Gregor with Fontan and the Confederacy which was a civil war. That's twice in over 12 years.

Because they have this thing called Perdan on the other side of the continent wanting to wipe them out.

Also, have you even seen their list of dukes? All insanely loyal to Sirion. Unless Perdan fragments, Sirion won't fragment. The only reason Krimml defected was because well the duchess there was the infamous Relak family. I wouldn't be surprised if the duchess changes her side again when things start favouring Sirion.

Giselle had her reasons for going to Westmoor with the Duchy. The city was already at >50% taken over by Fallangard, and as has been put into the newspaper she despises the Fallangardians for their treachery of Caligus, so she did the next best thing she went to a realm she would be welcomed in without even announcing it first.

If Caligus doesn't see that Fallangard is coming for them if it takes a northern city they're blind. But I don't think they're blind I think they're helpless.

They usually make their dukes serve in a military for a long time. When you fight for one realm for a long time, you will care more for that realm because you have invested significant hours into that realm. You don't see many people destroying their own achievements.

If I might interject, the reason is because the list of candidates who have been in the realm for so long is extensive. They have deep deep ties to the realm, and the way Dukes are selected generally means things are stable (They're voted on by the realm council as a whole, Giselle played both factions to get elected). Then in the way the realm is run the Dukes have a significant say in how things go forward. This means there is little incentive to leave as you have significant power in a large realm. Now Giselle's Duchy was always sort of a backwater, it didn't produce much gold, was heavily indebted to the realm for its defense and food, mostly because of the significant militia presence, which didn't mean a damn when the military went kaput, and so left helpless she took her Duchy and said no thanks to being the Duchess who couldn't defend her Duchy because her realm didn't do a thing for it.

Don't you all wonder why Aedenah stepped down so quickly as general after the defeat in Krimml too?

The only time I used it was when Hasland was being destroyed. It actually worked then. I was able to hold them off for a whole week with a handful of knights and the large units it provided. Unless you have help on the way or they went straight for the capital you're going to be in a world of hurt.

Are there actually any Titans left?

Presumably there are a few yes.

Too be honest its mostly old players leaving that makes me sad. Who is going to remember North and south Darka with me or when Tom openly had characters playing along side us, or even when Loren beat me out of a banker election in Fontan or when Indirk came to darka or when Lavagina's sister killed Herumor.

I remember the first three =)

I have noticed that new players tend to disappear more often since we got rid of the Mentor class/people stopped mentoring as much. That's anecdotal but I think real.

The oldest character, Gregor Relak, is currently around 110 years of age.

He is 113 right now.

Age was not introduced until some time around 2005-6, but I think characters created before then were given ages based on their creation date. Not sure about that last, though.

Here's what we know about age. Characters were indeed given ages based on the normal aging formula (I worked it out once, but I can't really remember how long it is for a year I think 28 days or so).  Stuart's character Doc was exactly 3 days older than Gregor for a really long time, and it's probable that this was exactly how much older he was. Aging is sped up by wounds and positions of power to varying degrees.

As Delvin said a simple wound can be serious business as you get older, it's how Gregor lost the Dukeship of Westmoor city. A light wound ended up putting him out of commission for 10 or 11 days. It's a record for me anyways.

Aside: Stu's player ID was 10, my own is 34, Tom's is 35 (Which I find amusing to no end). Stu and I agreed that it was likely he managed to keep the original account from when BM spun off from SM.

It will need some thoughtful tuning vis a vis infiltrators. We don't want to turn 60+ year old characters into fish in a barrel (though at the high end of the age range, it should start to get pretty hard to escape death). Some islands, especially the stable ones, have a large supply of very highly trained infiltrators; if the mortality formula is too aggressive, a lot of people will start getting stabbed to death.

It goes beyond that. If you open up actual death to anyone from infiltrators, an infiltrator caught attempting an assassination is immediate fair game for death themselves. Hell, if they're caught badly enough they should die in the attempt.

That said, I'd be open to the idea that people in Council positions and Dukes be fair game for death. I might rethink Gregor's taking the Judgeship some if only because he's by far my most favorite character behind Boeth and Giselle.

Wait a second, so only the older elves are elves? The long ears are really few then. I thought Sirion was still making it know they were elves to their people.

I mean someone can always be a half-elf... *coughs* that not another race entirely.

A long standing debate. Most of my characters assume that new nobles in Sirion just pretend to be elves b/c well... Sirion has elves.  Why let their poor delusions hurt them.  Its not much different than the Orcs of Oligarch.  Ahh the Orcs, now those were some opponents!

The percents will be very very low.  Even assuming even growth over the ~12 years we've had ~35,000 different accounts created.

So to put that into perspective we have 2.9k new accounts a year, in other words less than 8% in the past two years, and it just drops down from there (to if we're being generous for people in my class less than a fraction of a %).  If you mean percentage of the whole player base that's not what was originally said.

The graphs mean little by themselves, as it could be that 10000000000 people played 11 years ago, or 50 people played, and are all still playing. Both would mean entirely different things.
Percentages would work better.

"30% of players that started playing 11 years ago are still playing"

Precisely.  It could also be that there was a large influx a year ago and those people are all still playing.

edit: I'm sure the data doesn't also include players who've come back and accounts were gone either.