Open Letter to the Serpentlords

Vansittart

Why are you offended - are you a Scientologist and a Mormon?  My statement was that unlikely beliefs are a valid position to hold, but I consider them unlikely.  If your bar for offence is so low as to include statements that two religions whose adherents comprise a vanishingly small percentage of the world's population are unlikely to actually be the sole vehicle for universal religious truth, then it is set low indeed.  So low, one might almost speculate that you were looking for offence on a recreational basis.  That said, I agree religious metaphors are likely to result in distraction from the points they were intended to illuminate and, so, you may consider them retracted (no matter how apposite they may be).

I find the rest of your post, though, also not convincing.  The cry that something is an "opinion" and not a "fact" is the last refuge of the scoundrel who cannot justify their own opinions.  I would suggest that it is a fact that there are very few stealable items which contain information sufficiently useful for espionage purposes that people would either care if they were stolen, or pay meaningful money to obtain them.  In many years of playing, I only ever saw or heard of one or two examples.  Please feel free to provide me with more.

You're also noting in my argument that I admitted some clans had made a difference, but entirely ignoring the reasons why.  For every clan that succeeds, there are hundreds that have failed utterly, or at least are so unnotable as to have essentially failed (or are essentially adjuncts to other organisations like pre-order clans/city navies etc).  The only rational conclusion to draw is that the default is, therefore, failure and to look for reasons why the exceptions were exceptional.  I made an honest attempt at that, and was forced to the conclusion that any serpentlord high clan will not meet any of those criteria.

I also am just boggled by the statement "They can become anything they want". I suppose that's right, in theory.  They could become a clan which enforced wearing purple garments and danced a fandango every Turn of the Vault.  But they have to become something that develops organically from who they are now.  Otherwise, it's just... any clan right?  We're discussing whether any clan can ever do anything, which is just a silly conversation.  And I don't see any truly viable path for a high clan which starts from the basis the Serpentlords are starting from now - @Aerek had an excellent list of the reasons why which is by no means exhaustive.

Tharvis

I am getting the impression that this thread, originally intended to close a chapter in a friendly way, is on a highway to get nuked. Seriously, keep your discussions in private for a change.

Jovolo

Looks like reasonable discourse to me. Are we so afraid of differing opinions? 

Bluef

Vansittart said:

Why are you offended - are you a Scientologist and a Mormon?  

What I "am" is not any of concern to what I wrote. Your original statement was offensive because it singled out two RL religious systems, calling them unlikely sets of beliefs when, to be fair, every system of belief that requires faith in a supernatural or greater power could be called "unlikely" by someone. 

Your opinion that these two groups comprise a "vanishingly small percentage of the world's population" and that this somehow justifies your analogy is troubling. There are actually are actually 15 million Latter-day Saints  and reportedly 10 million Scientologists worldwide. This may be argued  probably drop in the bucket of people in world religions (7,000,000,000) but still they are a notable number that doesn't need to be further diminished by unnecessary and unflattering analogies. Moreover, how many people of a particular faith exist should not be relevant to whether you use them as a straw man in your argument.

My point was that discussion of RL religion doesn't belong here on these forums. 

Furthermore, your second paragraph really makes little sense. I am not the one stating opinion and calling it fact. You decried the SL as now being non-relevant and offered no facts to back up that opinion. I offered counter examples of several clans that have had a huge impact on Achaea (as well as different definition of "relevancy" may be earlier on). That you're not convinced by that listing does not make the imprint these organizations have had on Achaea any less meaningful or significant.

Honestly, I find it very difficult to believe that you're Targossian and haven't heard of Babel's Order, the Curia, etc. But whatever.

To me this is just a signal that you're simply unwilling to admit that you may have been incorrect in your original statement. Your oversimplification and attempts to discredit ideas presented here is equally telling. If you truly don't see a "viable path for a high clan that starts from the basis the Serpentlords are starting now" then I encourage you to play the game a few more years, get to know more of it clan lore and general history. Your current view is probably limiting your gameplay quite a bit.

This thread has probably served its purpose. Vayne had his say. Lacertix responded. It can likely be closed now as the speculation about the SL's future probably isn't very useful to anyone.

Jacen

Don't see why the thread needs closing. Its certainly no worse than the "Wat's A hashan" threads out there, and a lot of this discussion is objectively considering whether a city-House turned independent high clan is feasible in current Achaea, with additional consideration for the viability of a theft/assassin/spy organization with no loyalties, as well as novice recruitment and player retention. 

There's actually some pretty deep shit here. 

Vansittart

Well, leaving aside the religious stuff, your digressing into a discussion of "opinions" and "facts" which is a bit silly.  Of course everything, in the end, is an opinion but for the purposes of argument you need to support your opinions with fact and reasoning.  My point was that if you just duck out of that process by calling any post "an opinion" then you may as well not just post at all.  It was a request to engage with the reasoning, with supportive evidence, if available.

Which is why I find it confusing that you didn't understand my points.  I am not saying that clans can never have any impact, and part of my original post was founded on a discussion of the Curia and the Revolutionaries, so why you think I haven't heard of them, I'm not really sure.  My post attempted to work out why some clans did work, and most did not.  However, not one part of your post engages with the substance of what I was saying and instead only rifles through a thesaurus to come up with a list of pejorative adjectives and an attempt to demonstrate that your experience of the game is greater than mine.  Neither of which is terribly convincing, and combined with your request to close the thread, I assume that you have no interest in the substance of the discussion.

Bluef

Vansittart, given that the bulk of your last post is a personal attack (which says far more about you than me in the grand scheme of our discussions thus far), I think that's best left between us in PMs. I don't have any desire to derail this thread further away from the objective discussion Jacen would like to see take place.

Vansittart

Hi!  I don't see a personal attack there at all - just an attempt to re-engage with the substance of the dispute.  However, as you've now taken it to PMs, so will I.

Amarillys

I won't go in to details because I am not a Serpentlord, but I think there is so much they could do! I was raving to @Shirszae about all the possibilities and I cut myself off when I could have kept going. I probably spent an hour or so talking her ear off about what they could become. (Seriously, if any serpentlord wants to hit me up, send me a message. You can take IC credit, I just want some of the stuff to happen.) Yes, they have an uphill battle. All new things do. And this is a new thing of an old organisation. They are still an organisation, by the way. If you want an Achaean definition of organisation, clans are definitely included in with houses and orders. High clans even more so. They could become pointless. They could become irrelevant. Or they could change the course of serpent roleplay for the next hundred IG years. It is up to them, to their supporters, to their leaders, and to their patron to get them to that point. So let's help them by telling them what they have to fight through! Everyone needs to know what they need to beat to accomplish their goals. But let us not tell them they can't do it or that it is unlikely they will do it. Let's support them in their new place and hope that they can bring something new and meaningful to the world that we all love.

Trey

Bluef definitely gets her fair share of defamatory posts, but I'm with Vansittart on this one. You have to squint reeeeal hard to even remotely construe anything in that post as an attack. 

Kresslack

Vansittart said:

I didn't say there was no difference, I said for the purposes of the arguments above, it was a distinction without a difference.  The number of stealable items with "spy-relevant" information in them is very, very small.  What you're really talking about is charging people to return their journals (which will likely have sentimental value).  I don't think that practice should be outlawed or anything, but it's a fairly shoddy basis for an organization.

I don't think you really understand how I was using the word "organization" in my original post.  I was using it, specifically, as a defined term for "House/city/order".  I'm not seeking to get into a dictionary argument about what the word means, nor does my argument depend on that.

And, of course, you're right, that a small, dedicated core of players can change the path of Achaea.  And it's an entirely valid position to believe that this High Clan will single handedly demonstrate that the House Renaissance is not the right path for Achaea and will demonstrate its superiority to the experience of 98% of the playerbase who will be in their new Houses with very active patrons, and access to all the benefits that city and House membership bring in terms of coding, attention, RP background, attraction to new players, persistence of identity and factional roleplay.  It's even still a valid position to believe it will do this despite being founded largely as a reaction to ongoing internal strife rather than because establishing the clan made sense on its own merits.  It's *still* a valid position to believe it even though the very best this organization can offer is a version of a generic serpent House without any of the benefits that being a House used to bring.

People believe unlikely things all the time, and there's not much I can do about it.  It's just that the above seems to me to be a belief on about the same probability level of Scientology.  You're not even reaching Mormonism here.

I think your scope regarding this is very narrow and close-minded, all in all, and there's not much I can do about that. Not that I'm really interested in doing anything about it. I simply hold out hope that you'll be proven wrong. You say they're slated for failure simply for doing something different. While the odds may be stacked against them, I always root for the underdog. Only time will tell.

Edit: Just saw page two of this. Calm the hell down people. I appreciate sarcasm and the occasional begging the question when it comes to a discussion.

Jacen

Should single class or restricted class Houses be able to exist post-Renaissance? If the Serpentlords grew into a respectable organization as an independent high clan, how can Achaea provide better channels for novice recruitment?

Kresslack

Jacen said:

Should single class or restricted class Houses be able to exist post-Renaissance? If the Serpentlords grew into a respectable organization as an independent high clan, how can Achaea provide better channels for novice recruitment?

That's the whole point of the Renaissance. They (SL) effectively aren't a House anymore, so it doesn't matter. There won't be any single or restricted class houses post-Renaissance. There may, however, be High Clans that spring up to carry on the traditions and practices of what some Houses started, such as Knight programs, etc. It's already started happening in some aspects in Mhaldor.

Vayne

Jovolo said:

Looks like reasonable discourse to me. Are we so afraid of differing opinions? 

I agree that this is a healthy conversation which can and has the potential to continue to provide valuable insight to the leaders of the SL going forward.

However, I do not think the problem has so much to do with differing opinions as much as the subjective, post-modern mindset so many of us are conditioned with. The mentality that all truth is subjective and everyone has the right to do things their own way makes us feel criticism is a dirty thing even when it is constructively used. Criticism and argument, when rationally applied, promote growth by weeding out bad ideas and logic allowing one to more clearly see the landscape for what it is so that one might make an effective plan on how to traverse it. The road ahead for the SL is no doubt treacherous and rocky; I would hope their leadership would want all the angles it could get especially if the forecast is grim.

Besides that, some people will always and inevitably just seek to argue for whatever reason, often ego or lack thereof, and go through ideas with a fine-toothed comb searching the particulars for something to latch onto and contest while simultaneously missing the point of the whole thus adding nothing but hot air instead of pertinent content.

edit: hard to write all that on a cell phone

Addama

Jacen said:

Should single class or restricted class Houses be able to exist post-Renaissance? If the Serpentlords grew into a respectable organization as an independent high clan, how can Achaea provide better channels for novice recruitment?

Honestly, I hope that the Occultists can continue in some way, shape or form as a single-class House, because they are one of the few classes with rich RP built into the class (rather than it being defined by their city or Church or Dread Eclair).  It would kind of suck if all that work got wrapped up into a "freedom RP" House.

Bluef

Vansittart said:
However, not one part of your post engages with the substance of what I was saying and instead only rifles through a thesaurus to come up with a list of pejorative adjectives and an attempt to demonstrate that your experience of the game is greater than mine. 

Vansittart said:
Hi!  I don't see a personal attack there at all - just an attempt to re-engage with the substance of the dispute.  However, as you've now taken it to PMs, so will I.

Trey said:

Bluef definitely gets her fair share of defamatory posts, but I'm with Vansittart on this one. You have to squint reeeeal hard to even remotely construe anything in that post as an attack. 

I already clarified this in a PM, but since it's been commented on here, I'll do likewise: Suggesting that someone has to/took the time to look up big words in order to write a post of disapproval for your thoughts, is very much an attempt to discredit them (and by extension their ideas). 

I agree with @Kresslack‌ -- The whole point of the Renaissance is to wipe out single-class Houses. Cities will deign what classes are acceptable just as has already been done in Targossas in the past and every House therein will welcome those that are deemed acceptable. For Houses outside of cities like the CIJ and Merchants, they will end up taking all non-factional classes. This is another important reason why remaining a High Clan may further the immediate goals of the SL much more than aligning with any city ever would.

The forecast for the Serpentlords is therefore not "grim" at all. That is your perspective @Vayne and one you repeatedly seem content to propagate, even in the thread where you're supposedly trying to bury the hatchet.

Achimrst

We can always start Hashan bashing and close the thread.

Siduri

I love Hashan. I shop there every day.
(is enemied)

Vayne

The forecast for the Serpentlords is therefore not "grim" at all. That is your perspective @Vayne and one you repeatedly seem content to propagate, even in the thread where you're supposedly trying to bury the hatchet.

  Here @Bluef demonstrates a perfect example of the latter point I made in my previous post. I will reiterate what I said in the larger context of the post again: I do not think there is anyone who disagrees that the SL has their work cut out for them. This statement along with the constructive criticisms given anecdotally and rationally by others in this thread make the word "grim" perfectly appropriate. Moreover, despite this, I was attempting to point out that this feedback and discussion can provide a useful tool to navigate the inevitable hardship they will face.

Please do not make implications about my intentions. You do no one any favors.

Bluef

Vayne said:

The forecast for the Serpentlords is therefore not "grim" at all. That is your perspective @Vayne and one you repeatedly seem content to propagate, even in the thread where you're supposedly trying to bury the hatchet.

  Here @Bluef demonstrates a perfect example of the latter point I made in my previous post. I will reiterate what I said in the larger context of the post again: I do not think there is anyone who disagrees that the SL has their work cut out for them. This statement along with the constructive criticisms given anecdotally and rationally by others in this thread make the word "grim" perfectly appropriate. Moreover, despite this, I was attempting to point out that this feedback and discussion can provide a useful tool to navigate the inevitable hardship they will face.

Please do not make implications about my intentions. You do no one any favors.

So now that they've left your city, it's a good idea for you to try to indirectly offer their leadership guidance by posting and encouraging insightful commentary here on how treacherous and grim the path ahead of them is? This has to to be forum RP. I can't explain it any other way.

I think the SL have a unique and wonderful opportunity to roleplay together, which is what really matters. If their collective enjoys it, then relevancy to anyone else be damned. The Dawnstriders would have jumped at the chance to do what the SL have done. Gleefully. Through huge flaming hoops if they had to. But that House wasn't given the option to do so. 

Shirszae

Gods, can't you just stop? Please? 
Can't we just agree they have a great opportunity, but also a great challenge, and be done with it? 

Jovolo

That's dull

Siduri

@Bluef : To be fair, the Dawnstriders were destroyed before the historical precedent that was the Grand Merchant Collective's departure from Hashan. But yes, a thousand times yes, we tried and never could leave Shallam.

Bluef

@Siduri true. That was before the Merchants left Hashan. Even after Shallam fell, we tried though. We wanted to do exactly what the Serpentlords have done and were told no, absolutely not. Perhaps this is why I am so happy for them. 

Amarillys

I haven't received any messages from SL leadership yet about my myriad of ideas. I can only assume this is a clerical error and will be hearing from someone soon.  

I'll stop now.

Vansittart

Kresslack said:

Vansittart said:

I didn't say there was no difference, I said for the purposes of the arguments above, it was a distinction without a difference.  The number of stealable items with "spy-relevant" information in them is very, very small.  What you're really talking about is charging people to return their journals (which will likely have sentimental value).  I don't think that practice should be outlawed or anything, but it's a fairly shoddy basis for an organization.

I don't think you really understand how I was using the word "organization" in my original post.  I was using it, specifically, as a defined term for "House/city/order".  I'm not seeking to get into a dictionary argument about what the word means, nor does my argument depend on that.

And, of course, you're right, that a small, dedicated core of players can change the path of Achaea.  And it's an entirely valid position to believe that this High Clan will single handedly demonstrate that the House Renaissance is not the right path for Achaea and will demonstrate its superiority to the experience of 98% of the playerbase who will be in their new Houses with very active patrons, and access to all the benefits that city and House membership bring in terms of coding, attention, RP background, attraction to new players, persistence of identity and factional roleplay.  It's even still a valid position to believe it will do this despite being founded largely as a reaction to ongoing internal strife rather than because establishing the clan made sense on its own merits.  It's *still* a valid position to believe it even though the very best this organization can offer is a version of a generic serpent House without any of the benefits that being a House used to bring.

People believe unlikely things all the time, and there's not much I can do about it.  It's just that the above seems to me to be a belief on about the same probability level of Scientology.  You're not even reaching Mormonism here.

I think your scope regarding this is very narrow and close-minded, all in all, and there's not much I can do about that. Not that I'm really interested in doing anything about it. I simply hold out hope that you'll be proven wrong. You say they're slated for failure simply for doing something different. While the odds may be stacked against them, I always root for the underdog. Only time will tell.

Edit: Just saw page two of this. Calm the hell down people. I appreciate sarcasm and the occasional begging the question when it comes to a discussion.

Oh there's definitely hope I'm wrong, and I wish them all the best.  And I think your post and @Amarillys infectious enthusiasm are a nice point for me to duck out the conversation.  I'll put something in my Outlook calendar for a few months to remind me to start a new thread gloating/fessing up to being wrong in due course

Lacertix

Now that this thread has stopped derailing... I would like to thank everyone for the input, your ideas and concerns are appreciated, especially those thinking outside the 'they'll focus on being spies for hire' and 'they're screwed anyway' boxes. We had some ideas for the Serpentlords to find their niche, I'll hopefully be able to compile a nice list to send to the Gods and see what they will find viable and what not. What I don't want to do is put them up in the forums, for various reasons.

It won't be easy, but I tend to believe that if something seems easy, you're more than likely doing it wrong.

Antreus

Blujixapug said:

The potential for spying in this game is both overstated and understated. You aren't going to be Cate Archer or Emma Peel or Sydney Bristow, running between spotlights, dodging trip-wires, distracting dogs with peppermint bombs, rifling through filing cabinets for secret documents, disguising yourself with shoe polish and a tudung to infiltrate a military junta in Denpasar, fleeing from gunfire in an arms bazaar in Marrakesh.

But I can see people going to them as freelance spies/investigators. "Who stole my stuff - what thieves are currently active." "Is my husband doing sex with anyone but m... I mean, anyone." "What was that global message everyone just saw about the rainbow explosion in Dun Valley, is Eris returning or something, I need to know before an Events post so I can corner the market on rainbow Chaos cupcakes." "Does Cyrene have any elections on, who are the candidates, please prepare me a dossier on each. Half payment upfront and half on delivery? Steep rates, but I hear you're the best." With shadowy meetings, callsigns, dead drops for encrypted notes.

It would take a rare degree of cunning, perspective, discipline, and persistence to build up a commercial spying network. If they were capable, surely they'd have done it before leaving Hashan.

You'd be surprised at how much shade someone can get just sitting in the membrane all day, or the things people say when no one is around to give them dour faced looks.

My record so far is ~8 hours. I wouldn't say it is spying, but you do get a lot of anonymous tips for things, which you can then compile and find patterns or trends on a given day. Getting a beat on things, while not necessarily evidence, can point you in a direction you wouldn't have otherwise gone. When a name is dropped that you're looking for, or you hear someone is infiltrating an org on Membrane -- those moments are always cloud nine.

Building a spy network is tricky, because not only do you need to create a demand in the market, but you need to keep it interesting. I don't really think the game facilitates it too much.  I think freelance investigators is more apropos to the climate of Achaea. Not so much the espionage part Some amazing heists have happened though. 

One way I tracked a trend was to make some amorphous category such as "Leadership". Chatter alone tends to lean towards useless if it doesn't supply it's own context unless you get BIG, neatly written paragraphs. However, if you have your own context to draw upon you can often fill the blanks without making too many assumptions. Most of the time you get one sentence, not a soliloquy tell all tale.  Even if you don't get everything from one sentence you can sometimes follow a conversation regardless. If you're lucky you only miss only 1 or 2 exchanges.

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "Which one of us gets flogged for being visible?"

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "I also see this "Renaissance" like an awful wave, sweeping the world. I've already been hit by that wave once, I don't wish to live anywhere that is due to be hit by it still. Once was enough."

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "Finding leaders in people who only want to do their own thing is hard."

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "We offered our own terms, and refused to budge on them."

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "I would like us to concentrate more on who and what we are."

A male voice is heard through the membrane, "Was I supposed to write essays?"

A female voice is heard through the membrane, ”I’m way too sporadic and flighty for a House.”

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "Several of them actually pretend to not know what the Renaissance is and say they have never heard of such a thing. It's hilarious and stupid."

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "So much I want to get done but it's soo much worrk."

A male voice is heard through the membrane, "She is looking for helpers."

A male voice is heard through the membrane, "She said she lost her 'assistants'"

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "I could use a minion or two?"

Keeping current on posts and alongside the constant data stream you can sometimes make rather great leaps and connections:

A male voice is heard through the membrane, "This is our mice re-education camp." High chance that this could be Aktillum as per PUBLIC #19578

Here's some Hashan chatter surrounding the Serpent Lords on that fateful day:

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "I recognize that the enemies of the Serpentlords are my enemies, that the friends of the Serpentlords are my friends, and that the allies of the Serpentlords are my allies. Let us work as one and grow hale and strong."

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "I can't believe I participated in a bank heist today."

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "The Serpent Lords have left Hashan, I just finished helping evacuate the Estate."

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "At least on Treason. He has committed treason, several times over, but 'technicalities'.."

A male voice is heard through the membrane, "During the time before the Eternal Night, as you know there were three cults that each worshipped one of the Supernal planets." (Hashan tour)

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "The gods may have changed the status officially, but it was mortals that made the split occur."

A female voice is heard through the membrane, "Now I am responsible for the younger Serpents in Hashan, after all that mess with Serpentlords."

A male voice is heard through the membrane, "Sounded like they robbed it, guess 21:25:48 the wording threw me off."

I think spying network is overstated. What I think is understated is the potential for tabloid journalism. You can't deny it's power! 

Kresslack

Can't help but notice how the majority of those voices are female. -ahem-

Kakotas

Aerek said:

Yeah, I don't read a lot of Cult-specific hate going on, it's just assessing the balance of probability. Achaea is littered with the decaying remains of clans and high clans, alike, that thought they were cool enough to survive with zero city/House support. The Serpentlords are entirely welcome to prove us wrong, but they have some major hurdles to clear.

In addition to the question of role, ideals, and practicality of the organization, I think folks are underestimating the challenge of maintaining membership. A high clan, even a great one, doesn't have the recruiting potential of a House, because it isn't advertised to newbies coming in; they have to find it on their own or members have to recruit them. This means that the Serpentlords are basically going to be working full-time just to keep new blood in the org, and because even the best High Clan doesn't have the "legitimacy" of a Garden-established House, people don't have the patience for House-level tasks/requirements for advancement. This leaves you in the difficult position of having to relax standards to keep people interested/involved, which comes at cost to your member quality and reputation, or establishing high RP standards and slowly atrophying because quality players generally want to be involved with the game's major factions. It's not a pretty picture, and while the possibility for success exists, the chance for failure is large.

I don't say all this from a position of idle speculation. What the Serpentlords are doing now isn't really that different from what the Order of Thurisaz is trying do, having devolved from the Wardens' House to keep Knighthood alive. What I've outlined above are basically the challenges that we're currently facing, and we have the full support of a city and its Houses to prop us up. It's cool that the SL were permitted to strike out on their own, and I don't wish failure upon them, but they have their work cut out for them, to say the least.

The cool part for Serpentlords on this whole issue is it actually opens up roleplay especially if perhaps they established a high secret clan and then the generic high clan was their newbie clan. It's going to be tough but possible. And I think more possible and easier than some of the other transitions.

The issue here is Knight clans are basically in the same boat we are trying to keep things alive but we had everything taken away overnight literally in most cases and have been trying to just keep things going long enough to get our feet back under us. The difference is that when a person chooses a Knightly class with chivalry the concept of Knighthood is a pretty attractive option so people will try and be active just for that sake and because there are few other options. Serpents have tons of options and I think that might be the weakness but also the strength if that makes any sense.