Pristinely cut from crisp parchment, the edges of this stunning scroll shimmer with a dazzling,
ivory-white aura. Coloured to depict the impression of stained glass, the border of the paper hosts
minute flecks of gold, which line the art and add to the luminous shine of the overall design.
Inscribed into the other side of the page, a phoenix in flight, trailing a ray of Light dominates
the background.
It has no title and the owner is listed as being Aurora, the Lightbringer.
It weighs 3 ounce(s).
Jeslyn Vorondil and Kycen Rian-Moonshadow,
May good tidings fall upon your marriage, and Light guide your steps
through the rich tapestry of your life together. My blessings unto you
both on your special day.
Light guide you
Aurora, Goddess of Light
Comments
"I've never once regretted you being our leader" is high praise for a dude who still has no idea what the hell he's doing.
But there are also few personal ones that I treasure. For example, these are actually paintings (in gnoll blood) from Bluef's daughter Miallaria:
I have a journal full of apology letters from an ex-husband as well. Every once in a while when I'm going through my tomes I come across the thing and it reminds me what a douche he was and why Bluef is far better off without him today.
I also have a love letter that Kaie wrote to me when we very first became acquainted IC that I won't share here. But's it's all the more precious to me today, so it's in a special journal all its own, safe and sound forever.
Album of Bluef during her time in Achaea
We go from the terrifying...
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
I forget how the next happened, but it was someone who I had mentioned had annoyed me over some conversation. (If you haven't already guessed, his head was inside.)
A long time ago I stole a journal, and in it was a copy of a news post of a sermon some Sentaari gave where Chaos and Evil were described as being akin to burning flowers. I sent it to Tanris, Overseer of Ashtan at the time, and this was his response.
Stories by Jurixe and Stories by Jurixe 2
Interested in joining a Discord about Achaean RP? Want to comment on RP topics or have RP questions? Check the Achaean RP Resource out here: https://discord.gg/Vbb9Zfs
The joke being that I heard they could use some...
GUTS!
Ba-dum-tish.
I've wished for a long time that they would just do away with the ability to use messages as more-convenient letters. I know a lot of people are horrified at the idea of it, but I think perhaps letters just need a better, message-like interface. And I'm not even sure that's really necessary.
In general, I wish people leaned more on IC tools for communication and organisation rather than spawning more and more OOC tools like Projects and such. Tael doesn't ever use messages for IC communication and, when I've had substantial administrative duties in the game, I've generally used manuscripts and journals. They're not actually much harder at all to use for organising things - I've never had any problems personally and the only real problems I've faced is people whining that it's inconvenient to have to go to a particular room to update the manuscript they have to deal with a couple of times a week, which is, I think, a pretty reasonable imposition.
Restricting communication to letters keeps things immersive and IC and it opens up avenues for roleplaying - you can steal letters, you can show them to other people, you etc. None of that is possible with messages. Similarly, using manuscripts and journals in lieu of help files and projects keeps things immersive and IC, opens up further opportunity for things like people "cheating", like a novice who gets someone to sneak them into the househall to check a box on their progression record, which opens up a whole wealth of RP possibilities as they try to keep that secret and perhaps someone notices or investigates.
Though I am also of the feeling that a lot of resistance to using IC tools comes from people who have created far too much administrative work for themselves, which is a longstanding problem for people in leadership positions in the game who traditionally don't delegate much (even when the game defines formal subordinates for them) and worry about fastidiously tracking needlessly detailed, fine-grained information about relatively inconsequential things. Four times now Tael has ended up HoN for a house and every time I've easily made due with IC organisation tools by delegating real authority to novice aides rather than treating them like novices themselves and eliminating pointlessly complicated systems that require intensive administrative work to keep track of. Generally, I think people have been pretty satisfied with the outcome since the changes have tended to be kept, though most do seem to go back to using OOC tools for tracking anyway. Alas.
Tael himself has a few preserved letters, but I wouldn't share them OOCly for various reasons (which probably makes them sound a lot more racy than they are).
I might have had a little too much fun making this post. Maybe.
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
Would it be possible to perhaps have a config option for this, so that sender goes through the process of sending a message, but the recipient gets a letter?
Of course this falls short re: sending items, customising letters and so on, but perhaps just having the option of your messages transform to regular Delos-sent letters might encourage more letters into circulation?
You're absolutely right about messages being used because they're more convenient. As long as they're available for IC communication with no drawbacks at all, people will probably use them. On the other hand, having to go get a letter and post it from a post office seems like a pretty astoundingly insignificant imposition - and having to use the editor increases the effort by one button press and one mouseclick.
Which is why I wish you just couldn't use messages for IC communication. One option would be to preserve them for automatic use only, though that makes OOC messages impossible, which seems undesirable. But at the very least I wish there were an actual, explicit directive in the help files, and maybe a little system message when you send a message that says something like "You're sending a message to Tael. Please remember that messages are for out-of-character communication. If your communication is with the character Tael and not the player behind him, please consider using a letter."
The thing that frustrates me is that any time anyone brings up doing away with messages for IC communication, people scream bloody murder like they couldn't possibly keep up with the sheer volume of communication they receive and send. But the convenience of a message over a letter is pretty minimal and, to a larger extent than is generally recognised, these high volumes of correspondence a few players are complaining about are mostly self-inflicted.
I used to have my return message set to inform people that I ignore IC messages, asking people to send a letter instead. Eventually, I just gave up. You would think this was like asking people to move mountains - people either just ignored the request entirely or they actually ranted at me that it was unreasonable to request they go through such a terrible, arduous process of sending a letter.
The question is which one is more feasible to change, to make letters easier, or messages harder?
Edit: to clarify, the suggestion wasn't to make all messages into letters, but provide an option to the sender to have it delivered as one, without the (however correctly) perceived hassle associated with it.
Messages are just more practical by far. I do use letters for "formal" interactions, because that's how I see them: they're RP aides. When you're reaching out to someone you haven't really spoken to before, to discuss something important or open up some new avenue of interaction/relation, use a letter, you can do much more with them. But when you're just letting me know about day-to-day things, use a message. If you flood my inventory in letters composed of one-line notifications, house reqs, or other quick clarifications you needed while I wasn't online at the time, I will PK you.
For the little things, where the effort of a letter isn't warranted, just pretend messages -are- letters, we're cutting out all the unnecessary steps when the content of the message isn't worth all the extra work.
Letters would have to be tweaked a bit, since currently they're write-once, but I still think being able to write to these things without literally leaving the game would vastly improve their place as roleplaying instruments.
There are other improvements too, such as being able to format text. Having documents with longer lifespans than letters (but shorter than scrolls) would be cool too, for things like official documents or whatnot. Notebooks (like books but with lifespans) would be kind of cool too.
Of course, how Multon chooses to respond to such a letter could change the course of his entire life. It is a truly important decision. So, after much thought, Multon decided such an important missive required an immediate response. Multon proceeded do just that by buying another letter, putting the first letter in that one, and sending the new letter he bought to the highest ranked person in Ashtan who was in the realms at the time. The reply Multon wrote read as follows....
Multon is not a complicated person... And, as regards some things, a man of few words.
P.S. Whoever I sent this to, it was kind of a spur of the moment decision, probably not the best one, but I thought it suited Multon's personality.
One way to do it is to allow you to send a tell to certain denizens (who would probably be located in post offices), having them send someone a letter/note on your behalf, for a fee (could be more expensive than the 100 gold letter cost). The disadvantages compared to normal letters would be that you're limited to a single line without formatting, like tells and messages, and it could also have stricter limitations on length. That way sending letters from a post office (or silver whistle) is still useful because they allow for longer and better-formatted text, they can contain items, and you can use custom stationery.
An example of how it would work:
[spoiler][/spoiler]
And on the recipient's end:
[spoiler][/spoiler]
Was wondering if Sarapis got 41 letters (stalker) or whether there were 40 other recipients somewhere and you were hosting a party.