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Comments
What about those that do pick a city? Will they still be able to join the city-less houses?
They sure can. Whether their city will enforce that all citizens must be members of their city houses is another issue!
Lookin' at you, Mhaldor.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
It has been a long time since I have been a member of the Druid Guild - but YES YES YES.
Part of what makes / made Achaea so wonderful was the diverse nature of things (no pun intended) including the Druids standing alone, eschewing Cities (and for many even Villages!) and retaining an original and unique definition of Service to Nature First.
I'll keep reading, but from the moment I heard of these forthcoming changes, I feared for my first love - and what shall ever be in my heart.
Deborah
for Prythe
Who will live and die a Druid
- To love another person is to see the face of G/d
- Let me get my hat and my knife
- It's your apple, take a bite
- Don't dream it ... be it
Have to agree, @Asmodron is completely wrong about all of this.
Also, my main concern is that even separate from cookie-cutter is that, even with an "idea" behind a house, there is some basic framework which would lean towards RP, Combat, merchantie, ritual or something. This is frustrating because some of us do all of that. In the Occultists, I don't have to decide to join my House in combat or ritual work because the house isn't just about that. I want to keep both. What I want is to just not leave the occultists. God damnit do I love my house.
I would be very surprised if the Occultists get the axe. It has always seemed as one of the more solid houses in the game, so I don't see why you would have to leave it.
Unless, of course, I am wrong...
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
The thing with the Occultists is that it's one of the very few houses that still remains single class (ignore when houses were opened up to multiple classes before) and they have such a rich, immersive environment that's centered around Chaos and keeping their secrets jealously guarded. Apart from the Ashura, they're one of the strongest houses in Ashtan, but with the upcoming changes to houses, I'm unsure how the Occultists will cope, especially with welcoming outsiders into their midst.
And as an example, I'm the house totemer for the Occultists. When I had to replant 48 totems in the estate, they made me do it blind (which was pretty novelty for me), because while I'm trusted so far, they don't really trust anyone except their own.
With the changes sounding like they're going to be revolving around setting up two-three Houses to separate combat/scholarly pursuits without class restrictions, it's Houses like that which will likely be the most effected. But, I'm ok with that, because the issue across the board is that class restrictions are hurting Houses noticeably. People who are actively interested in combat usually end up changing classes periodically, and so do others. A lot of Houses these days have small active memberships as a result of class restrictions, so I'll be glad to see them gone.
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> Yes, which led to the Burning Times which led to what it became, the Occultist Guild. Spreading it to Hashan is -not- in keeping with the contiguous RP of the class. Things change.
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> Have to agree, Asmodron is completely wrong about all of this.
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No I am not....
Everything I stated has been canon for decades and seems to be misunderstood in current game politics.
The concept was that -many- cabals bound together to seek protection and thus formed the occultist guild, however it was still common practice for cabals to exist underground and even seek refuge in havens that accepted them, like Hashan. From hashan's early beginnings, it showed an acceptance for those that practices occult studies or any study they saw fit, which generally put Hashan in a bad light with the church, other than the whole darkness factor of course.
There is literally -nothing- in the lore stating why Occultists would not be accepted in Hashan nor any reason why the long history of them having lives there be eschewed.
Now if you want to continue this discussion, I would wish for actual canon facts to be stated with proper reasoning behind them, rather than simple 1 liners of 'you are wrong.'. Thank you
My memory is pretty fuzzy since I haven't been in the Occultists since shortly after it became a house, and it's stuff that should be learned (or debated) IC anyways so I won't argue the specifics, but the RP, history, and lore (both before and after actual players were involved in it) behind the secrecy/clancularity/occultism of the Occultists seemed pretty well established to me.
I wouldn't say pretty well established; there were a lot of cabals after all, and they often bickered and disagreed with each other vehemently, from what I'm to understand. However, it was established if not somewhat tenuous, and certain events forced them to band together to survive, even after many of them were still driven out of hiding and killed. That eventually ended up progressing and working out though.
A thought occurs("Uh oh, humans, Synbios is thinking. That can't be good-!" Silence, dissenting alter-ego.):
While the majority of the Houses stand a chance of being obliterated and/or fused/repurposed, the new Houses have one particular attribute that makes it stand apart from Targossas's Houses - the weight of history. Unless the Divine behind the cities have made it explicit that these new Houses are practically 'new Houses that have totally no relation to the past Houses and/or Guilds, take your past RP and kick it to the curb', it is still possible that - by skillful IC and OOC negotiation between player leaders(who are encouraged to also forward underling thoughts and critique in said negotiation) and patrons - the transition to Renaissance may be made possible with a significant reduction in 'muh dead RP' feelings by way of concocting some logical reason for the change that ties closely to their previous House/s.
I think this was @Iocun's biggest concern, which is understandable and a relevant. Targossas got created because Shallam fell into the sea and was destroyed. It's not very practical though, to go around and destroy and then subsequently recreate every other city however, and honestly that would be terrible imo. So instead, I suppose it falls primarily to the game staff and developers to mesh out a way to make the transition smooth and logically sound from an ic, rp point of view.
It feels like Sarapis/Tecton and co don't want to take the time to do that here, however, and just want to charge into the new system so they can implement multiclass ASAP. Not every city needs an RP basis for a shakeup (i.e. Mhaldor's can totally be "Sartan's will") but as for why a house like the Occultists would suddenly open up to all classes or merge with another? Man, good luck having any of them feel satisfied with this.
The unfortunate constant in every universe is that satisfaction is not universal. Every voice of assent will be countered by an equally forceful voice of dissent. The best that can be done is to continue implementation, albeit, as has been said, with the thought that the transition will cause a net positive amount of 'good feels'.
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All the cabals lost the ability to gain karma when they grouped together to create the Book and it poofed on them. Occultists then used Necromancy until Sartan took it away. I believe the use of the Occultism skillset came specifically from the occultist guild.
You can read the History of the Burning Times or just collect the karmic books and read those.
We never said that there's not going to be RP involved in each city/house change, we're just not doing world-shaking destruction on the level of Shallam.
YOU MUST HAVE ALE AND MEAT WITH LORD PHAESTUS' CHOSEN, OR YOU DIE!
Or he could try telling the Occultists even more just how wrong they are about their lore while everyone disagrees with him.Kyrra said:
This was a concern for me from the very first post about multiclass. @Lianca and I discussed it then. I wasn't super happy because I didn't want to see all that go to the way side. However, I've had several OOC months to think about it. From what I can gauge, I think this is how the current Occultists would like to see it go: We can still keep secrecy to some extent while merging into the new system. We had multiple classes in the past. I think the thing that we ought to do is to still maintain an oath of secrecy regarding our research and lore. If you look back to the burning times, it wasn't the fact that Occultists existed that made them such a danger to themselves, it was the fact that their experiments had noticeably negative effects in the eyes of outsiders. Given our focus on ritual and Chaotic research, this still holds very much true. (I mean think about who the Occultists are and think about how much we generally care about the effects of our research on the environment.) I think a house dedicated to the growth of Chaotic research could be a very rich role with a basis in philosophy/ritual/combat. The only loose strand then is what to do about almost anyone being an Occultist. I think we'd have to bite our lips mostly on that one. As angsty as some of us are, we can't really fight the divine, not even if @Jhui helps (might be pretty close, though). If they were to become factional, where the city could control access to karma and the occultism skill, that could help significantly to reduce the straight busting up of that roleplay. If not, we'll have to try to get our citymates to do exactly what we've done for years, an IC policy of discouraging anyone outside of Ashtan from practicing. It's worked very well, in my opinion, and it's a very good way to build RP. Lastly, relegating our works and lore to a city denizen is probably just the worst thing I can imagine RP-wise. The Occult would burn Ashtan to the ground before they'd let that happen. @Tecton, I'm not sure how this fits in your framework, or how the city and house leaders feel about it, but keeping the House a secretive house dedicated to the mission of exploring Chaotic research sounds just like a wonderful compromise to me. I know that we have to adjust, and we will so I'm trying my best to give ideas here.
What I meant was. The Houses still existed. There isn't hope for that anymore.
Don't worry Kyrra, I don't think we'll try to steal runelore :P At least, it would surprise me.
No plans as part of this project, no.
I'm not sure why there's such reluctance about using this as a platform to firm up the factionalisation of the factional classes. Nature is the only faction with complete control over its factional classes. Other factions are expected to just make do with the status quo, with weak assertions of "history" to back it up.
This is the perfect opportunity to remove Devotion from Cyrene's future, Occultism (and Necromancy?) from Hashan's, and to give those factions their own factional classes to build their identity around.
Factional classes are more than just PK perks, they can be used by leaders to create the core identity of a faction. It's easy to identify Targossas's factional ideals when it has (allegedly) exclusive access to the Paladin and Priest classes, and the same is true of Occultists in Ashtan, Necromancers in Mhaldor and the forestal classes in Eleusis. Give Cyrene Runies and Bards, and allow them a theme of the arts backed by earth magic (mountains, etc.) and give Hashan Shaman to tie them more firmly into Darkness.
Seems like such a no-brainer to me, but the admins seem reluctant to pull the gun, and I don't understand why. Removing Priest/Paladin from the list of accepted classes in Cyrene's new Houses, and doing the same for the rest of the factional classes that have similar crossovers, costs nobody and benefits everybody.
As much as I yearn for us to have Runies, the outcry with totems as they are would be loud (and pretty legit).
I think the bigger issue would be Hashan, Eleusis, and Ashtan all losing access to knights.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."