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Comments
Ultimately you still end up with the most active "leadership types" making the decisions anyway, it just takes a lot longer.
(i.e. if Houses moved away from the Guild perspective on things, as in focusing everything for the most part around one particular class instead of one particular ideal).
The event starts with:
"their estate to discover strange gashes in the masonry oozing viscid, black liquid onto the floor. When they investigated the pooling liquid, suffocation or entrapment within a strange fluidic space followed instantaneously."
Which would have one believe that something rather epic is happening, perhaps a new enemy spawning its wrath in mhaldor, yet....
"reached an unavoidable conclusion: the Spires must be sealed, and Mhaldor must regroup along new lines."
Um...what about what the foozle happened? The damn walls were leaking ooze, and unless the mhun slaves have been slacking in their sewer duties, I'd like to damn well know why that was..
"With the destruction of each Spire's entrance, they sensed the connections to their houses end."
Why would the houses end just because the hall tumbled? Just because an org moves, doesnt mean it has been destroyed. An org is its people, not its lair. Additionally, still no reason why the frick this all happened, other than OOC reasoning of "New house setup".
-This- is what I meant by the House renaissance events feeling very off-hand made. The coding part is being done excellently, as is natural for Achaea, but the events are highly lacking. There were hundreds of avenues to take for an interesting event to introduce new houses:
- Mhun slave revolt. They broke through the sewers and began a raid of Mhaldor (ironic). Several sapper terrorists rushed past enemy lines to Baelgrim fortress and had it blown to smithrens. After the entire conflict with dozens of mhuns placed in shackles, Mhaldor sees a need to unite for stronger bonds to thwart any enemy getting this far again (or some such).
- Feuding of Evil ideals: Conflicts between Suffering and Oppression leads to forming of new houses. Naturally, Sin and Vengeance standing in the background hoping for some spotlight time.
- Sartan opens up the Inferno completely to Mhaldor, revealing the insidious secrets and natures within, as well as the Demon princes that thrive there. With the new knowledge and understanding, Mhaldor sees a need to form its houses under these new teachings of evil within to bring Sapience to hail beneath its fiery might.
(sorry if some of these ideas seem a bit askew, writing them on the spot).
I admit the whole... long hidden prophecy was kind of groan-worthy, how it was done was good.
As usual, I would advise people not to be so quick to judge! I'm pretty sure the event for the Houses in Mhaldor hasn't ended yet. I'm sure the Garden has also had their hands full with other Achaea-related projects and the previous lull was to give us enough time to set up and stabilize the structure of the Houses before the event could move onto its conclusion.
I'm not sure what I see Eleusian Houses as, as having been apart of the culture for a small while. I do feel like they could benefit from a similar set up to Mhaldor, in that they seek to serve Nature, but how they approach that differs from House to House. Whether two or three Houses, all should embrace combat on some level (defense of Nature should be a priority, Eleusis is back in the world stage, it should stay there).
How exactly you want to split it up is a little more difficult - I feel like one House should absolutely embrace the savage, wild crazy Eleusians I know some of you guys want to be. Tribalistic, violent/passionate in their beliefs of Nature overtaking all, using both scare tactics or stealth to achieve their goals. Then a House maybe on the deeper, ancient parts of Nature, the secrets of the natural world, learning to tap into that to further their goals. Think like the tree ents from LoTR. This wouldn't just be about knowledge-gathering, but about slowly unveiling the mystery behind all of how Nature works, from the peaceful summer rain to the violent thunderstorm, etc.
There could be room for a third House, I just can't think of another concept right this second. I'll give it some additional thought.
Edit: Wow that kind of sounds really close to Mhaldor Houses and I absolutely didn't mean it to. 9am brain. I'll keep brainstorming!
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
It seems like the current setup already fits pretty well with how Targossas and Cyrene are handled (splitting the houses by playstyle; though it seems there's not a lot of distinction between Druids and Sylvans), but it still has problems and is pretty tied to class. So I think the primary goal is to divorce the houses from the forestal classes, with a secondary goal of making the new houses different enough to shake things up a bit (which means splitting them up in a different way). Anything that leaves warriors vs scholars/priests as the main distinction is probably going to be too similar to what they already have, and so the old stagnancy/problems (whatever they may be) will remain.
With that in mind, my idea: Three houses. One focussed on defending Nature (not just through combat. Think a mix of protectors and tenders), one focussed on studying/exploring Nature, and one focussed on actively seeking out and working against potential threats to Nature, including all cities (again, not just through combat, but also through espionage, diplomacy, etc.). If Eleusis's population is better suited to two houses, then drop the scholarly house (I mostly left it there as a clearly non-combatant choice, since Eleusis seems to have a large population of hardcore non-combatants). The main point of this is the internal/external distinction, with the bonus of having a house that's inherently antagonistic towards the rest of the world.
As for lore/theme, I'm not sure. Something that promotes a wild/savage/tough image over the "kind and gentle" Nature would be good. Maybe you could go with animal motifs; Bears for the defenders, hornets for the invaders, owls for the scholars? Or maybe something like "Keepers", "Seekers", and something scholarly or explorer-ish ("Walkers"?). Or maybe Gaelic-inspired names (like leath-ri), though no obvious examples comes to mind beyond "Fomoire" or "Fomori" (though that's already used in Annwyn).
Ok guys - hold off on the jokes because I want to hear what you think could possibly work for Hashan in terms of Houses. We have a very small population so I am thinking three Houses would not make much sense. I know we are still struggling with Identity Issues and that’s a huge factor. However, the Renaissance could really help the city reinvent its self. I am really interested in hearing some serious thoughts about Hashan, and not the just blow up the city kind of thoughts!
One for a combat oriented foresty killers House.
One for a knowledge/ritual druidic House.
One to disagree with the Nature Gods/Goddesses that they don't know what Nature is.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
-
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
On Hashan I think you guys should focus on the Alchemy parts of things and unite the city around Night. Have one house deal with Theology of Night, especially the divine of Night, and one that is knowledge. I think the army should be left to combat stuff I don't know why a combat specific house is ever really needed I mean you're all on the same city.
I think Hashan is in the pretty unique position of having a great opportunity to make something completely new, and I'm really hoping that's what happens. More than any other city (and particularly without the Serpentlords, which wouldn't have worked with multiclass anyway), Hashan can get away with simply ignoring their historical houses and making something very, very interesting here. As with the other cities, there should probably be a combat/noncom division of some kind, but that leaves a lot of room for variation. A combat house in Hashan with its renewed focus on the Night might be a combat house that focuses less on soldier RP and more on assassin-style RP. A noncom house might be, nominally, a merchant consortium (paying homage to the Merchants of the Crown and offering an actual place for people who want to focus on that sort of thing), but in fact function as a sort of front for spies and masters of esoteric rituals and knowledge. There's a lot that could be done I think.
I disagree pretty fundamentally that Hashan should focus on the alchemy stuff. I know that a lot of people have this desire to see alchemist become a semi-factional class, but it's largely too late for that. While it fits well thematically with the whole Night thing with the esoteric knowledge and all that and with existing Darkwalker stuff, alchemy is already a thing in the game that is tied pretty explicitly to cities in general, not to Hashan specifically.
Okay, you want Hashan to shine? To become something deliciously mouth-wateringly interesting? Well here's my suggestion..
DONT FOCUS ON A NIGHT THEME.
Really...I mean isnt it obvious from trial and failure that it just isnt working? It is just far too much of an ambiguous, complex, boring (dont zap plz), uneventful, non-advancing theme that did very little for Hashan. Im not saying destroy it, because it's always pretty to have around, im just saying LET IT DIE.
Let's roll back to Hashan's back....backer...moooore..no wait, that's too far, we want post-forest, there we go.
Look at Hashan, it was literally a civilization that choose a spot in the forest, cared little for what forestrals thought, and decided to cut these trees down and make a home. It didnt ask if it could live there, it took it and made itself the king of the north ithmia. Fights broke out, with angry wild hairy forestrals throwing rocks at brick-houses to try and get them off their land. Hashan, undiscouraged, got it chainsaws and continued to cut those trees down. What did we get from all this:
A conflict of NATURAL VS CIVILIZATION.
Ah, what a glorious concept. Civilization seeing that progress was the way to advance in life and bring great innovations to the land, and the natural which saw that life is only worth living in commune with the natural world around us. This boys and girls is what we call a conflict of interests and morals.
But wait...there's more. What's that in the corner? Inside the shadows...why yes...it seems to be a bit of forgotten Hashani lore...interesting, let us delve into it.
It seems that, during Hashan's early days as a budding civilization, that the people there were being hampered too strongly by the forest creatures and dryads and were beginning to lose faith. The current leader sought a solution, and discovered the Buckawns. Such odd creatures they were, they promised they could remove this threat, naturally at a price. And so, it was with this dark pact done, that the buckawn, ancient enemies of the dryads, drove off the forest warriors, slaying them in a bloody mess. Till this day, the buckawn fortress stands near to Hashan, a secret alcove of a pact long forgotten.
Oh look! Another wonderful story to follow up on. *wink wink*
Tl;dr:
Focus Hashan on a concept of civilization and progress. Become the center of innovation and, to the fear of the forestrals, the expansion of cities and manufacturing.
Also, while I agree that Night is not a great overall theme from a gameplay standpoint, I think the key thing to remember is that there's room for both. Night fits very naturally into just about any other thing as a sort of seedy secret underbelly.
Having a city that's main focus is on civilization and taking control of Nature fits pretty well with the kind of thing I meant to suggest - it's not hard to imagine an expansionist mercantile house representing the economical side of civilization, but with a secret esoteric sub-organisation, nor a more traditional standing army that secretly harbours shadowy assassins and violent rituals.
I think the main thing I wanted to get across was that houses don't have to have one, single, official focus. If you want to have some super-secret esoteric knowledge organisation, if anything it makes more sense to wrap that up in an organisation that essentially acts as a front (said front simultaneously providing a place for people who are less interested in the esoteric stuff). For instance, while the house is, according to its members, doing just fine, I think the Luminai would have made a lot more sense as a secret organisation within the Harbingers for instance. For Hashan and the whole Night theme, that makes even more sense.