Here is that thread. Personally I believe that the supposedly neutral city should have citizens that are also neutral in belief, instead of allowing citizens and allies from all over the alignment spectrum. Just curious as to what others think about Hashan.

What the heck is Hashan and why do people talk about it. wtf

Hashan is... I have no clue what is up with Hashan. I've gotten several negative experiences from interacting with it, though it may be just the people. However, there is one thing I must ask Hashan: What are Hashan's goals? What, if anything, does it wish to accomplish? Only then, can I really give much input. Otherwise, well, I suppose I'd have to go by a House by House basis.

What I don't understand is when people who are in Hashani houses gets enemied to Hashan and then we have to attack them even if they're just in their househall. Is that normal? Do other cities deal with that too, and if yes, how?

That is not normal, and rarely happens. Hashan is the only city I know of who does this, and allows their citizens to hire enemied marks.

It's Hashan. It's normal.

Hashan is the rebel child of Sapience.

I WILL NOT CONFORM!!

To Exelethril: Huh? What do you know about Hashan?

Anyways, I meant that Hashani defenders attack a city enemy who's a member of a Hashani house when he goes inside his househall. I don't understand why someone in a Hashani house would be enemied in Hashan... I don't know about hiring enemy marks. I don't even remember if I've ever hired on anyone.

edit for grammar and spelling. English isn't my first language.

I've always felt that we've used Neutrality as an excuse for Apathy. I think it's just that as a whole we really don't care about the backgrounds of certain classes, whether or not they are really supposed to interact like buddy buddy.

As for the whole enemying of a non citizen house member and attacking them, I could be way off here and someone more in the know politically speaking, correct me if i'm wrong, but I think a part of it or much of it stems from the patch up of the old Guild-City charter. I'm not sure if it was ever actually completely rewritten when the conversion from guilds to houses took place and I know in the early years it caused much friction. My understanding is that the old charter was patched and tacked up for today's situation.

Hashan's problem is the lack of unity. You'd think Ashtan would have this problem, but they always seem to come together on things - See: CTFs. Hashan has so many different paths for it's members to take, with so few restrictions, which is a major problem. I've only ever been Mhaldorian, though, so I've never had the "everyone in my city follows different paths" thing.

Mhaldor. We don't get all this drama.


PS. Don't mind Exelethril, he just likes to jump on bandwagons.



This must stop! No more Hashani Apostates!

Hashan has a few problems:

1) WeAk, incompeTenT leaderShip (notE that this doEsn't apply to all the leadership, just a select few.. you know who you are).
2) In a city alMost allIed with mhaLdor, pAladins need to Be removed And/oR excommed, not knighted.
3) People who are not really bad people but really stupid, inane, and annoying.. read: 50% of people that stand at Crossroads.

If we can get rid of these three groups of people we will have a decent city, but god damn it gets frustrating.

P.S. Shutup Exelethril, and Kallorn, hands off our apostates.

We need Saltaern back as the Seneschal or Sobriquet

No way! Apostates = Congregation.

As much as I like Sobriquet (as a person, not a leader), his era was full of soft decisions and enemies walking all over us.

I almost felt like you were trying to hint at something with that at first.. but then again I am very tired.

By the way, you should get that shift key looked into.

This.

Yesterday I signed in, and didn't know who a single one of the 20 or so people on the CW were.

Hashan and Cyrene should just be excised as failed experiments in neutrality. I have no problem with the citizens of either in general (granted, there are exceptions) but as cities, they serve no purpose in Achaea save to dilute an already dwindling and increasingly apathetic playerbase. In a world of terrible conflict and high fantasy, there is no room for neutrality.

From my post ashtan enemy ousting what have you. I ventured to the east to Hashan, why because everyone told me that Hashan will take anyone as a citizen.

I learned that it only takes three days to get unenemied and become a lovely new citizen of the glorious crown of the Ithmia. In my short stint there I saw the most corrupt form of government Houses fighting and enemying each other. Bitter rivalries between citizens and a leader who would come around. bark at people and disappear without resolving dire issues like city defense and rather yell at a citizen for putting weed in the fire even though 13 of his citizens died to one thief earlier that day. hell he didnt even show up to his own allying of neighboring city of Tasur'ke when the elders waited around for hours for him.

I saw amazing leadership mind you in the regeants at the time while I was there doing their damned best to keep things together. But in all essence they just wanted to get at each others throats and leaving for 6 hours would result in 15 new newsposts on why they are better than the latter in posting.

I kindly cut my losses and quit city. I hold no hard feelings but I do agree that Hashan...get yourself a reputations that isnt LOLHASHAN and get your - together. You got the people now you need to focus on a goal.

By no means do i think that Fauscht could do that...im a mess...im just saying.

People that join Hashan and try to fix it are masochistic weirdo's.

Hashan. Heh. It's a city that quickly removes any semblance of an ideal because it might offend someone, keep them from accepting certain people, etc. I gave up and went back to Ashtan a while back.

Working on it!

Hashan was basically a lot of thieves and bandits at first, right? Then some people came along and said hey, mind if we camp here? We'll help chase off disgruntled customers if you make room. You can have half my sandwich. Then some more came along and the first people said right, we wrote down some laws, but long as you follow them, don't bring the war here and bring food/money/muscle you're in. Trouble is the original people got too nice and let the new guys have some say in how the front was governed, and eventually they turned it from just the serpents and some rejects from Ashtan/Shallam huddling together for warmth, into the city state blah blah without the original inhabitants having a say anymore. Civil war inevitably ensues, except not really, because people are too - and no other city will take them if they piss off the wrong person. And it seems to have been that way ever since.

On one hand there's the original people who just want to do their thing but have a safe spot to rest at somewhere in the woods. Then there's a bunch of hippies who think the reason nearly anyone can become a citizen is for some sort of cosmic harmony and acceptance. Some of the hippies have guns. Then there's the equivalent of a bunch of americans that moved in a bit after and just assume they're in charge because they're better people.

It's not going to get better by itself. There's potential for something interesting to happen there, if only IRE gave some god or gods permission to actually do something interesting for once.

With Hashan having a dominatrix as a brothel proprietor(Kaethryn), that statement does not surprise me.

Peirce's fiance (a crown merchant) was enemied for ressurecting him even though he was not/had not been raiding at the time. He had died to a Hashani ganksquad 20-30 minutes after being in the city.

Otha got really pissed at someone (read: Aaritraea or however you spell his damn name) for leading the squad and performing the resulting enemy status. He then stated on citychat that he had asked every security aide - ironically he only asked those from his house (not Otha).

Sobriquet told me to quit Hashan if Otha didn't like it - so he did, and promptly accepted contracts on Aaritrea and his ganksquad. Demfrax/someone else agreed to duel me and die. Aaritrea ran to Hashan when Otha jumped him, and proceeded to kill his loyal entity. Otha defended that entity, breaking no laws. Aaritrea enemied him mid-fight but still died before the guards killed Otha.

During the peak of this, the Black Lotus claimed that city enemies could stay in their househalls in peace (Arkius at the time was enemied). Otha abused the crap out of this, laughing in the face of the weak black lotus attempts to get him out.



Saltaern - Probably my favorite interaction with any Seneschal. Otha assasinated him at Crossroads under direct order from Ourania during that entire mess. He was discussing private Serpent Lord information on the city channel.

Edit: Probably my favorite kill ever, since it was in the middle of a city meeting with tons of defenders around him. By defenders I mean the Hashani army, not necessarily actual combatants.

Edit Edit: Saltaern ended up pardoning me himself immediately after praying - leading to the some of the most interesting RP

Sobriquet - Caused this entire house vs house vs city mess. (Well, with the help of the Black Lotus. Here is a hint for any city leader: Do not bend or break city laws for the direct benefit of yourself or your house. It is painfully obvious. If you do, do not bitch when someone like Otha decides to kill you for it. kthx.)

Interesting that you try to wrap Cyrene in the same bundle as Hashan. We have none of the problems highlighted in this thread, have a consistent RP basis, and an identity that has remained virtually unchanged since the city was founded.

I disagree that there is no room for neutrality, even if you assume Cyrene is neutral (which it's not, but that's another thread). Hashan, Cyrene, Oakstone, and Eleusis, all sit somewhere in the middle of the spectrum with militant evil (Mhaldor) on one end and militant good (Shallam/Church) on the other end. You could even make an argument that the Freedom/Chaos of Ashtan's style represents a kind of neutrality.

If you force players to choose either 100% black or 100% white you'll restrict the player base immediately and significantly.

Only if you mean neutral -in one specific conflict-. Chaos is not neutral, it is one of the four (three until Nature gets itself unjumbled) major aligned factions. It will never be 'neutral.'

For being on-topic: Hashan doesn't seem to know what it wants to be, to the point where I worked towards Shallam/Church not even bothering with them any longer. Neutrality doesn't seem to work very well. Not-so-zealous can work, if it's done well, and Cyrene at times has managed to do so.

Aww. Now I feel special.

On a completely separate side note. I have never been so amused by the amount of butt-hurt that I hear about by not allowing people to abuse City Powers.

I was brought into MoS during a time of intercity fighting, helped to level things out, and have leveled every decision the same. If it's a threat, stop it. If it's not, it will dwindle out in a short time. Then again, some people don't like my style, they would much rather me enemy half of sapience for looking at some citizen the wrong way.

From my experience with Hashan, which is limited mostly to headaches with morons wanting their way, Hashan is essentially a container for vastly different Houses. For 90% of the leadership's time it is essentially babysitting these Houses, as they all want to [Pinky and the Brain impression] RULE THE WORLD [/Pinky and the Brain impression]. Why can nothing get done as a City? Like the above mentioned reference to Ashtan, getting people to work together on a common goal must also mean that they can get along in the first place. I don't know the specific numbers, but I'm guessing all the Serpentlords are enemied to the Black Lotus and vice versa. Let alone the Spirit Walkers somehow managing to piss everyone off with so few members. The only House I have actually seen do anything about problematic members or situations is the Merchants. Many members, I can guesstimate about 15 during my short time there, have been run out of the House after having been deemed problematic. As a House, the Merchants have a lot of odd members, though none of them wandering around Hashan looking to kill other citizens for inane reasons. As one of the largest Houses in Hashan, let alone Achaea, we already do well enough to stay out of Hashani drama.

Hashan's problems could be handled with several harsh reality checks for a few of her Houses. House enemies get enemied to the City, for example, and City enemies not being allowed in City Houses. While this would nearly stop the intercity fighting, it would also boot nearly all of the three problematic Houses out of their House and City. And if such a change were implemented, I would be incredibly surprised if the Black Lotus and Serpentlord representatives didn't immediately enemy everyone they knew was in the other House, just out of spite, and again, to RULE THE WORLD.

If the Houses of Hashan could learn to actually shut up once in a while and stop screaming that they are the best in the world and they'll destroy anyone who opposes them, they might get somewhere. Having dealt with a good number of those members (not all, mind you) I can say with certainty that this will never happen unless the babysitter of a government that Hashan has bends them over the proverbial knee to spank them into compliance.

You seem to be blissfully unaware of a lot of things that happen IG. City enemies aren't allowed in Houses. I won't go into the specifics of interhouse relations, but you are definitely wrong. And as for houses doing things about problematic members, several members of my house have been disfavoured for actions against Hashan, and I myself have been yelled at and reprimanded for my attack on a Hashani (the cause of my enemying).

Getting the facts before making up your own will certainly help your credibility. And there are a lot more people than you know that think you're doing a terrible job. Not that I can speak on it, not being Hashani, but I do recall replacing a lot of sigils when Security Aides were caught being lazy and not responding to my tells about said sigils decaying. Rule your Aides with a tighter grip and actually act the part of MoS, and you wouldn't get called incompetent.

I like Hashan, and even its idiosyncratic quirks are growing on me. It reminds me a little of Poland, struggling to maintain its identity under the pressure of several regional powers.

Following your own advice would do you well.

Examples:

Otha, still a member of the Serpentlords was constantly a 'problem' when he would sit in his househall, after passing through Hashan as a City enemy.

Calicia was recently enemied for destruction of property, and is the Houselead of Serpentlords.

Harmonia was enemied a number of times for one random reason after another, and was still part of the Spirit Walkers.

Lothiac was an enemy of Hashan a long while ago, and was told to get it fixed while remaining a member of the Crown Merchants. He is now unenemied and still a member.

Again, as I said, things could be simplified if a hard set law was in place, but there isn't one. And as I mentioned earlier, the first moment it is implemented, enemies will occur for the sake of occurrence. Just to get people enemied and more people hiding behind laws that make them feel superior.



I am extremely glad that it seems this way. I work hard to maintain that aloofness. As a player, I make sure Wattsee stays distant and abstract in many things, including his views on reality. He does however, have a very strong awareness of many things that go on, and often relies on people assuming him unaware. Assumptions are always fun to play off of, in my opinion, especially when I get to twist people up in their own.

Hashan still hasn't recovered from Reznik practically burning it to the ground years ago (this when Darkness was stronger). I mean darkness was there identity for awhile and now they really have none. As far as I know, Darkness isn't very viable at the moment either (not that it couldn't be.) I really don't know what I would do if I was in control of Hashan. I hate to think it's too far gone, but maybe it is.

Hashan was always intended to be a city of mercenary neutrality.

Today's Hashan has hundreds of issues with this:
-No fighters
-Infinite mudsexers
-Alliances with other cities.
etc,etc.

You are 100% wrong, and you have no idea what you're talking about.

Eleusis isn't neutral at all. Eleusis = Nature.
Oakstone isn't neutral, they're uhh...the retarded sect of Nature, but still not neutral.
Ashtan isn't neutral in any way. Ashtan = Chaos.
If you think that Ashtani freedom is in any way neutrality, your wrong.


If you opened your eyes, you'd notice that the tree branches four (with some other subtle ones thrown in) ways instead of 2. Chaos, Nature, Good, Evil.

I don't know you at all, but from this statement alone, I already feel like the rest of your post could be disregarded. Something about the absolute arrogance of a statement like this just takes all your credibility and sends it winging out the window.

On topic: Hashan is a bit of an enigma to me. When I interact with city leaders, I get a distinct sense that everyone is plotting against everyone else, all the time. This is brilliant for Balynne, as it allows for all sorts of fun interactions, but it does make Hashan difficult to take seriously as anything but the group Mhaldor doesn't have to worry about.

This is kind of depressing when I think about it though. There are some really great people in Hashan. Lately it just seems like they're all being drowned out by the louder, less interesting people.

I'm kind of dissapointed that you would lump Cyrene and Hashan together.

Cyrene is at the very least, unified for the most part... for much more unified than Hashan currently is.

To me, Cyrene is like the pretty boy in high school who gets good grades and excels at what he does, but doesn't really know what he wants to do with his life.
What Cyrene needs is direction more than an 'identity'... we're already -NOT- neutral, and I don't recall us ever claiming to be. And unlike Shallam, we traditionally didn't deny anyone into the city... those developments were reactions to conflict instigated by Mhaldor and Ashtan. These conflicts have strengthened our connections with both Shallam and Eleusis, but we're still independent enough to not be manipulated by either force.

I do believe we can work a bit more on a goal: something we want out of the world that we can work towards... but Cyrene isn't a case of confused identity or failed neutrality.

Hashan seems like the quiet kid in the corner who WANTS to be big, but can't figure out how to get there. So he hangs out with the 'big boys' (Read, Mhaldor) while he's suffering through an identity crisis. I have no idea how to him through that crisis, he'll have to figure it out himself.

I have never spent enough time in Hashan (as a citizen or as a visitor) to make a good judgment of the city. That said, from what I can tell, Cyrene is far better than Hashan. Cyrene has consistent roleplay geared towards seclusion and the arts. Personally, I feel that a few Cyrenians are screwing the rest of the city over, but that argument has been done again and again and should not be repeated here (four um arrpei).

[Forum RP]
You should have stayed and fought the man, instead of defecting like a yellow-bellied coward.

COWARD!!!!

[/forum RP]

This is probably the single best sentence that has been written in this thread.


On several occasions, you have demonstrated Wattsee's complete ignorance of the duties of MoS, and complete ineptitude with regards to making decisions. It's another example of soft leadership Sobri-style that means we just get walked all over yet again.

I hate to take away your feeling of specialness, but you're not the biggest problem with Hashan leadership at the moment. You're number 2. Number 1 will remain unnamed, because while I know you're intelligent enough to understand that these forums are OOC, the person in question isn't.


Cyrene has less problems than Hashan, yes, but it's intensely boring to play a Cyrenese character (maybe it's just me). Hashan always has things going on, there's always scheming or defending or arguing to be done.

+1

It just depends on what you're looking for. I like conflict, I like combat, and I like intrigue, but I could never play a Shallamese character, because I would have to deal with those three things all the time; it would get tiresome. Cyrene offers me a place where I can be a part of the world conflicts but never be swept up in them, practice combat but never become hunted for it, and dabble in politics and intrigue without having to watch my back every day.

In a sense, I suppose I do like Cyrene because I can avoid conflict/combat/politics when I'm not in the mood for them, and I can seek them again when I want to pursue them. I still defend from raids, I still deal with tiresome politics, and I still accept consequences for my actions and the actions of my city, but by and large, my day as a Cyrenian is never as set in stone as the days of other cities' citizens.

Cyrene's also a much friendlier enviornment for new players. The whole 'community' thing they have going on is great for young characters, but can get grating for older, established ones. It's a shame when someone I like leaves the city, but I never blame people for growing up in Cyrene, then striking out into the rest of the world/game to see what it has to offer.

In that perspective, I've always held and hoped for Hashan to be the more 'adult' version of Cyrene. A place where they city doesn't hold your hand, and the Houses and communities don't even like each other. Hearing about the inter-city conflicts in Hashan, I always get images of gang wars and shady deals. To an outsider, that sounds like fun, but I can see where low-quality players would take that 'fun' potential and just make it a headache.

Conflict in Cyrene? Basically, Cyrene is for carebears. You can end the analysis there. Hashan actually has some good rping avenues, they're just full of idiots.

The problem I see with Hashan is that when someone tries to discipline on of the citizens, they run to their House and can basically be safe. Until the Houses are ready to submit to city laws, there can really be no order. Another problem is that the city really has no way to bring down the hammer on a House for doing something like the SL did. It would be nice if the gods would let you tell a House to just get out if they don't agree with the city like the Sentinels and Hashan in the old days.

+1111 lolz for cluelessness.

Honestly, the SL/BL 'war' and such aren't necessarily the bad kind of drama. What Otha pulled afterwards was the bad kind of drama, Aaritrea and Draqoom also created a lot of the bad kind of drama. House vs House wars, from an IC perspective are kind of stupid and annoying, but from an OOC perspective it was sorta like a fun ghetto turf war.

Lolz I think my city matterz, I make a difference lolz.

Lolz.