So I leave for a weekend concert series, and I can't be a priest in Cyrene anymore?

Aminah

Thanks for your answer @Tael

If this is in fact intentional, it is definitely the right way to go about it. But then, I have to say, it should be wired into the game that you have to go to some Font of Devotion sitting in Targossas to join the class. Excommunication should be removed from the game. If you are booted from Targossas, you lose your class too. That's the ideal solution for these ends. You can only join the class if you are a member of Targossas, something like this...

But, again I must repeat, I strongly disagree that these ends benefit the game. I wasn't here in the past, so I don't know what you mean that things didn't work back then. But now? It's quite difficult trying to RP an actual holy goodness and not the sort of sympathetic good that you are talking about. I can't help people. I can't preach to people. I can't do anything. Good is marginalized to the faction that loves holy way and destruction. It's not inclusive and not useful to the game. It diminishes the possible ways to RP good. Holy war has its place, but can't we agree that there are other ways? I suppose, according to all that I've learned from this thread, most people think not

By radicalization, I mean to suggest that 'save that which can be saved, destroy that which cannot' is an extreme and unaccommodating way to play good. It is NOT the way good has been defined in the past. It's just how it has been for a few years. And to say that players who want to play good characters have to accept this is much more narrow-minded than my assertions.

Aodfionn

Why do these rants always happen when I am at work and can mostly not type

Ognog

Achaea is a world of high drama, and the Pantheon are doing wonderful things to generate that conflict and drama for us. In cases like this, however, history has shown that there will be some players who can move on, while others will be lost from the game forever - and that's disastrous.

The real issue that will cause some players to quit is the thought of all that IRL time and money they have invested in their character that may now be wasted. If you change class there is a cost, or if you change city there is a cost (in moving subdivision house and starting again at lowest rank). Either way these players have lost something due to circumstances outside their control.

Siduri

Ognog said:

Achaea is a world of high drama, and the Pantheon are doing wonderful things to generate that conflict and drama for us. In cases like this, however, history has shown that there will be some players who can move on, while others will be lost from the game forever - and that's disastrous.

The real issue that will cause some players to quit is the thought of all that IRL time and money they have invested in their character that may now be wasted. If you change class there is a cost, or if you change city there is a cost (in moving subdivision house and starting again at lowest rank). Either way these players have lost something due to circumstances outside their control.

To be fair, that doesn't only concern Cyrenians. I'm a Targossian shop owner in Cyrene, and I had built a big villa for my Cyrenian children to grow into and meet up with me. I've invested massively as an outsider into the city, and what is going on has had me treated in ways that make me wish to leave Cyrene entirely. It will cost me, too, and probably more than any single devotionist needing to retrain skills.

Vithincus

Woohoo! Even more shit that would be way better suited to discuss in game being plastered all over the forums! Gag me with a fucking spoon.

Santar

Cyrene should've done the right thing like 2 RL years ago and restricted new devotionists from joining, while allowing their current devotionists to stay. 

Their leaders foolishly chose to not do that. It was obvious that devo was going to be stripped from Cyrene at some point.

Aminah

@Jukilian
What are you talking about OOC ideas about Good? I get my ideas from reading the previous historical IG perspectives on it, like the Codex of Light and the Holy Codex. The difference between these and the recent views on Good are immense. I don't care about OOC ideas about Good. Nothing I said indicates that I do.

Blujixapug

Hellen said:

Yeah, Good in Achaea has always been a theology rather than 'moral good'. Its a literal religion, with the ability to excommunicate you. This is hardly a misunderstanding. There is no overarching moral good. There is what Deucalion and Aurora say what Good is and that's it.

They should have called it something less open to misinterpretation, like 'the Light', or 'the Glory of the Emperor' or w/e.

Hellen

Last I recall, nobody really called it 'Good' any more. Most of them I've been in contact with just called it 'the Light' and such. And weren't those books set aside when Deucalion and Aurora made their new rules and such?

Ayami

Aminah said:

Thanks for your answer @Tael

If this is in fact intentional, it is definitely the right way to go about it. But then, I have to say, it should be wired into the game that you have to go to some Font of Devotion sitting in Targossas to join the class. Excommunication should be removed from the game. If you are booted from Targossas, you lose your class too. That's the ideal solution for these ends. You can only join the class if you are a member of Targossas, something like this...

But, again I must repeat, I strongly disagree that these ends benefit the game. I wasn't here in the past, so I don't know what you mean that things didn't work back then. But now? It's quite difficult trying to RP an actual holy goodness and not the sort of sympathetic good that you are talking about. I can't help people. I can't preach to people. I can't do anything. Good is marginalized to the faction that loves holy way and destruction. It's not inclusive and not useful to the game. It diminishes the possible ways to RP good. Holy war has its place, but can't we agree that there are other ways? I suppose, according to all that I've learned from this thread, most people think not

By radicalization, I mean to suggest that 'save that which can be saved, destroy that which cannot' is an extreme and unaccommodating way to play good. It is NOT the way good has been defined in the past. It's just how it has been for a few years. And to say that players who want to play good characters have to accept this is much more narrow-minded than my assertions.

The issue here is that you aren't really differentiating what you think, on an OOC level, good is, versus what it is in a roleplay sense in Achaea. You called it 'propaganda' earlier that Good comes from Targossas. It's not. It's the game's canon. It is no more 'propaganda' than someone in a LOTR mud saying mordor is a bad place. Imagine joining a LOTR mud, joining mordor, and saying 'well I don't want to be a mordorite and serve sauron and be evil, you're stifling my roleplay.'

This, unfortunately, is extremely common in game and in Cyrene in particular. I spent a long time in Cyrene and people honestly got OOCly upset about the idea of Good. They used OOC logic to say Targossas is 'wrong' about Good, when canon-wise it cannot be.

Good in Achaea can only be 'holy war' because Achaea is a violent and radical land. Being nice to people in Achaea would be absurd as a factional stance when the other major stances range from destruction of cities for not being natural enough to a literal worldwide tyranny based on purposefully causing pain to everyone alive.

Ayami

Aminah said:

@Jukilian
What are you talking about OOC ideas about Good? I get my ideas from reading the previous historical IG perspectives on it, like the Codex of Light and the Holy Codex. The difference between these and the recent views on Good are immense. I don't care about OOC ideas about Good. Nothing I said indicates that I do.

I missed this earlier, but those sources were all essentially retconned out because they were deemed to be unsuitable both from an OOC and IC perspective. Clinging to them, especially as a character that wasn't even around when they were a thing, is counterproductive.

Aodfionn

Cant tell if people are trolling or just hilariously ignorant. 

Tael

Aminah said:

It isn't the only way to play a good alignment. Sorry. Good should be a diversity that embraces the continent. The corner in which good resides is ever diminishing. This, again, is not good for the game. It deters interesting and beneficial interaction.

I think this is the fundamental misunderstanding I was trying to get at. And I'm starting to suspect it hinges on what we're meaning when we say "alignment".

There isn't only one way to play a "good alignment".

There is only one way to play a Good alignment.

Those are not the same thing in the same way that Evil in Achaea is not the same thing as generic evil. A lot of evil behaviour would not be appropriate for a Mhaldorian character. If you want to disregard orders and run around murdering people, I think most people would comfortably call that evil, but it's not appropriate for Mhaldor and it isn't Evil. You can be evil without being Evil. Evil in Achaea is a sort of radical social darwinism. That isn't supposed to be a definition of evil, it's supposed to be a definition of Evil. And it's important that Mhaldor have a definition of Evil because that's the unifying principal behind the city, that's the thing that keeps everyone working toward the same goals. It's called "Evil", but the name is pretty incidental. It could easily have been called something else. The game is not trying to offer this notion of Evil as a definition for the everyday word evil, they're trying to formulate a philosophy that will lead to an interesting and dynamic faction, and they ended up calling that philosophy Evil.

In the same way, there's good. This is obviously a thing in Achaea. People use the word and it means mostly the same thing it does in real life. The debate over what makes a person good is pretty much the same as the debate is in real life. You can certainly argue that diversity that embraces the continent is good.

Then there's Good. This is not an attempt at offering a definition of good. This is an attempt at hammering out a unique, interesting, and dynamic philosophy to drive factional conflict and roleplaying. The name is, again, incidental. No one is trying to tell you that what the Good faction believes is what you should believe "good" means. The Good faction itself is very clear on this - it's probably the single most-discussed aspect of the whole philosophy.

As for what "should" constitute Good, that's an empirical question, not a moral one: the thing that should constitute Good is whatever is best for the faction-related conflict and roleplaying in the game. And we aren't flying blind here - we tried a version of Good that was diverse and embraced the continent and all that. It didn't work. At all. It was a nightmare. It was a bad idea that just about no one who has played the game for any length of time thinks we should go back to. It lead to endless bickering, vicious politicking of the worst kind, toxic clique behavior both IC and OOC that makes today's complaints of the same seem downright silly, and tremendous organisational aimlessness. The Good faction had virtually no part in the larger narrative of the game, aside from a few extremely radical subgroups.

It sounds like you're relatively new and got caught in a very unfortunate situation. This change has been in the works for a very long time and most feel it is a good direction for things to be moving in. It absolutely sucks that you got invested in the class and the city without knowing this (and I doubt I'm alone in wishing there was something that could be done to help you), but that doesn't mean this was an impulsive, selfish, or mistaken change to the game and it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with what constitutes Good in the game, which, again, is not an attempt at defining what lower-case good is or should be.

Edit: To address a couple of things that showed up since I posted. 1) What exactly is the downside to rejecting pluralism that you seem to be seeing? You've said a few times that you don't think this is good for the game, but I haven't seen any explanation of why, whereas the problems with pluralism in a faction that was nominally part of the primary axes of conflict are pretty well-understood by people who were playing during the time of Shallam. 2) I'm not sure why you can't play a character who helps people and preaches. Your class doesn't really determine whether you can do those things. If you have to insist on having some sort of Divine, holy inspiration for it, there are plenty of gods aside from Aurora and Deucalion who are not Good, but who are clearly good (which it sounds like is actually what you want).

Aminah

Ayami said:

Aminah said:

Thanks for your answer @Tael

If this is in fact intentional, it is definitely the right way to go about it. But then, I have to say, it should be wired into the game that you have to go to some Font of Devotion sitting in Targossas to join the class. Excommunication should be removed from the game. If you are booted from Targossas, you lose your class too. That's the ideal solution for these ends. You can only join the class if you are a member of Targossas, something like this...

But, again I must repeat, I strongly disagree that these ends benefit the game. I wasn't here in the past, so I don't know what you mean that things didn't work back then. But now? It's quite difficult trying to RP an actual holy goodness and not the sort of sympathetic good that you are talking about. I can't help people. I can't preach to people. I can't do anything. Good is marginalized to the faction that loves holy way and destruction. It's not inclusive and not useful to the game. It diminishes the possible ways to RP good. Holy war has its place, but can't we agree that there are other ways? I suppose, according to all that I've learned from this thread, most people think not

By radicalization, I mean to suggest that 'save that which can be saved, destroy that which cannot' is an extreme and unaccommodating way to play good. It is NOT the way good has been defined in the past. It's just how it has been for a few years. And to say that players who want to play good characters have to accept this is much more narrow-minded than my assertions.

The issue here is that you aren't really differentiating what you think, on an OOC level, good is, versus what it is in a roleplay sense in Achaea. You called it 'propaganda' earlier that Good comes from Targossas. It's not. It's the game's canon. It is no more 'propaganda' than someone in a LOTR mud saying mordor is a bad place. Imagine joining a LOTR mud, joining mordor, and saying 'well I don't want to be a mordorite and serve sauron and be evil, you're stifling my roleplay.'

This, unfortunately, is extremely common in game and in Cyrene in particular. I spent a long time in Cyrene and people honestly got OOCly upset about the idea of Good. They used OOC logic to say Targossas is 'wrong' about Good, when canon-wise it cannot be.

Good in Achaea can only be 'holy war' because Achaea is a violent and radical land. Being nice to people in Achaea would be absurd as a factional stance when the other major stances range from destruction of cities for not being natural enough to a literal worldwide tyranny based on purposefully causing pain to everyone alive.

I really do not want to be disagreeable because I am very thankful you are even talking with me. But I have to say, I think you misunderstand me.

I don't have an OOC opinion about good. I don't even know what Good is OOC in things like LOTR or anything. Never saw the movies, never read the books.

I call it propaganda because it is a drastic revision from good's definition in other times in the game. I only know Good as it is defined in this game. It is much more restrictive and destructive now than in the past.

I don't particularly see where the authority comes from that Targossas has the last say on Good. Maybe you are someone else can prove me a total idiot on this, which I would be thankful for. Good is an eternal, unchanging force that comes from Creation, right? It isn't something that a divine of Light or a divine of Righteousness can claim total dominion over because, as it exists, Light and Righteousness are only aspects of the grand realm of Good. Good's minor realms have been so extensive. All we have from them IG are endless revisions that have become more and more radical and narrow as time has gone forward. I strongly feel this is not healthy for the game.

Hellen

You're reading old texts as to what Good is. Even things that claim to be unchanging can be changed by Gods. Targossas gets its authority from the Bloodsworn Gods, who are the Gods of Good right now. It might be prudent to take a trip to Targossas and take a look in their library.

Ayami

Aminah said:

Ayami said:

Aminah said:

Thanks for your answer @Tael

If this is in fact intentional, it is definitely the right way to go about it. But then, I have to say, it should be wired into the game that you have to go to some Font of Devotion sitting in Targossas to join the class. Excommunication should be removed from the game. If you are booted from Targossas, you lose your class too. That's the ideal solution for these ends. You can only join the class if you are a member of Targossas, something like this...

But, again I must repeat, I strongly disagree that these ends benefit the game. I wasn't here in the past, so I don't know what you mean that things didn't work back then. But now? It's quite difficult trying to RP an actual holy goodness and not the sort of sympathetic good that you are talking about. I can't help people. I can't preach to people. I can't do anything. Good is marginalized to the faction that loves holy way and destruction. It's not inclusive and not useful to the game. It diminishes the possible ways to RP good. Holy war has its place, but can't we agree that there are other ways? I suppose, according to all that I've learned from this thread, most people think not

By radicalization, I mean to suggest that 'save that which can be saved, destroy that which cannot' is an extreme and unaccommodating way to play good. It is NOT the way good has been defined in the past. It's just how it has been for a few years. And to say that players who want to play good characters have to accept this is much more narrow-minded than my assertions.

The issue here is that you aren't really differentiating what you think, on an OOC level, good is, versus what it is in a roleplay sense in Achaea. You called it 'propaganda' earlier that Good comes from Targossas. It's not. It's the game's canon. It is no more 'propaganda' than someone in a LOTR mud saying mordor is a bad place. Imagine joining a LOTR mud, joining mordor, and saying 'well I don't want to be a mordorite and serve sauron and be evil, you're stifling my roleplay.'

This, unfortunately, is extremely common in game and in Cyrene in particular. I spent a long time in Cyrene and people honestly got OOCly upset about the idea of Good. They used OOC logic to say Targossas is 'wrong' about Good, when canon-wise it cannot be.

Good in Achaea can only be 'holy war' because Achaea is a violent and radical land. Being nice to people in Achaea would be absurd as a factional stance when the other major stances range from destruction of cities for not being natural enough to a literal worldwide tyranny based on purposefully causing pain to everyone alive.

I really do not want to be disagreeable because I am very thankful you are even talking with me. But I have to say, I think you misunderstand me.

I don't have an OOC opinion about good. I don't even know what Good is OOC in things like LOTR or anything. Never saw the movies, never read the books.

I call it propaganda because it is a drastic revision from good's definition in other times in the game. I only know Good as it is defined in this game. It is much more restrictive and destructive now than in the past.

I don't particularly see where the authority comes from that Targossas has the last say on Good. Maybe you are someone else can prove me a total idiot on this, which I would be thankful for. Good is an eternal, unchanging force that comes from Creation, right? It isn't something that a divine of Light or a divine of Righteousness can claim total dominion over because, as it exists, Light and Righteousness are only aspects of the grand realm of Good. Good's minor realms have been so extensive. All we have from them IG are endless revisions that have become more and more radical and narrow as time has gone forward. I strongly feel this is not healthy for the game.

Don't feel bad about disagreeing, people aren't trying to yell at you I'm pretty sure!

I addressed this in a post between that and this, but the 'old' idea of Good was essentially retconned out. Every single god associated to that got axed, quite purposefully, and replaced. Not only replaced, but replaced by gods that have an even stronger claim to good than pentharian/miramar/etc. do due to canon. These gods essentially showed up with a signed certificate of Goodthenticity and said 'ignore everything before us.' Good is a specific ideology, a religion dedicated to defending Creation at all costs. Everything else is lowercase-good or it was deemed wrong.

Aminah

Tael said:

Aminah said:

It isn't the only way to play a good alignment. Sorry. Good should be a diversity that embraces the continent. The corner in which good resides is ever diminishing. This, again, is not good for the game. It deters interesting and beneficial interaction.

I think this is the fundamental misunderstanding I was trying to get at. And I'm starting to suspect it hinges on what we're meaning when we say "alignment".

There isn't only one way to play a "good alignment".

There is only one way to play a Good alignment.

Those are not the same thing in the same way that Evil in Achaea is not the same thing as generic evil. A lot of evil behaviour would not be appropriate for a Mhaldorian character. If you want to disregard orders and run around murdering people, I think most people would comfortably call that evil, but it's not appropriate for Mhaldor and it isn't Evil. You can be evil without being Evil. Evil in Achaea is a sort of radical social darwinism. That isn't supposed to be a definition of evil, it's supposed to be a definition of Evil. And it's important that Mhaldor have a definition of Evil because that's the unifying principal behind the city, that's the thing that keeps everyone working toward the same goals. It's called "Evil", but the name is pretty incidental. It could easily have been called something else. The game is not trying to offer this notion of Evil as a definition for the everyday word evil, they're trying to formulate a philosophy that will lead to an interesting and dynamic faction, and they ended up calling that philosophy Evil.

In the same way, there's good. This is obviously a thing in Achaea. People use the word and it means mostly the same thing it does in real life. The debate over what makes a person good is pretty much the same as the debate is in real life. You can certainly argue that diversity that embraces the continent is good.

Then there's Good. This is not an attempt at offering a definition of good. This is an attempt at hammering out a unique, interesting, and dynamic philosophy to drive factional conflict and roleplaying. The name is, again, incidental. No one is trying to tell you that what the Good faction believes is what you should believe "good" means. The Good faction itself is very clear on this - it's probably the single most-discussed aspect of the whole philosophy.

As for what "should" constitute Good, that's an empirical question, not a moral one: the thing that should constitute Good is whatever is best for the faction-related conflict and roleplaying in the game. And we aren't flying blind here - we tried a version of Good that was diverse and embraced the continent and all that. It didn't work. At all. It was a nightmare. It was a bad idea that just about no one who has played the game for any length of time thinks we should go back to.

It sounds like you're relatively new and got caught in a very unfortunate situation. This change has been in the works for a very long time and most feel it is a good direction for things to be moving in. It absolutely sucks that you got invested in the class and the city without knowing this (and I doubt I'm alone in wishing there was something that could be done to help you), but that doesn't mean this was an impulsive, selfish, or mistaken change to the game and it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with what constitutes Good in the game, which, again, is not an attempt at defining what lower-case good is or should be.

I do appreciate your explanation and empathy on this. What you say makes sense with the countless revisions that have taken place in Good while Evil has remained, again from my limited understanding, unchanged. As for the details, I think I need more information from established characters to find out what went wrong in the past.

I still hate and disagree with the idea. But you and the other players are definitely right that this has been a trend coming. This will make for, hopefully, a fun and interesting RP situation for Aminah. I'm such a novice that I don't even know most of my skills anyway. I probably won't even miss them.

Aminah

I would have to say, if it is the case that everything in the past about Good is no longer true or relevant, then those things have to be removed from the game. If unchanging things can be changed by Gods, well... you see why I call it propaganda again!

TL;DR delete the holy codex and I'll call it even

P.S. - I have spent a LOT of time in Targossas' library. I've read through everything I could on the philosophy of Good. There is actually very little on the topic written by players - far less than a dozen unique entries.

Tristyn

Hey, let's all stop being dicks. All you guys would get pissed off if you came back from vacation and you had to change your class.

Honestly, you would like New Worlds Ateraan, Aminah. The church there is exactly as you describe. I know, because I headed it up for years. Though when you have a church setting, you get the church atmosphere with all of the bitches and hoes complaining. Why I quit that life.

Halos

Whoa, kind've late to this thread. 

re: no more devotionists in Cyrene, it's a good change (get it). Tbh, quite a few (Targ players) quietly been looking for reasons to rip devo out of Cyrene's hands for actual years. Looking down on them, killing their devo clan, and bullying them didn't work. Subtle wasn't working.

Turns out all Targ had to do was rob them and then act innocent. Moral outrage did the rest, and you guys gave it up voluntarily.

I know it stings now. It feels like ripping off a bandaid (get it, no healing lol). But this is so healthy for both factions, and I'm so excited to see both faction ethos solidify a little more.

Hellen said:

Last I recall, nobody really called it 'Good' any more. Most of them I've been in contact with just called it 'the Light' and such. 

... er... what?

Hellen said:

You're reading old texts as to what Good is. Even things that claim to be unchanging can be changed by Gods. Targossas gets its authority from the Bloodsworn Gods, who are the Gods of Good right now. It might be prudent to take a trip to Targossas and take a look in their library.

...yeah. I think you're about halfway there.

Ayami said:

I addressed this in a post between that and this, but the 'old' idea of Good was essentially retconned out. Every single god associated to that got axed, quite purposefully, and replaced. Not only replaced, but replaced by gods that have an even stronger claim to good than pentharian/miramar/etc. do due to canon. These gods essentially showed up with a signed certificate of Goodthenticity and said 'ignore everything before us.' Good is a specific ideology, a religion dedicated to defending Creation at all costs. Everything else is lowercase-good or it was deemed wrong.

The actual definition of Good was actually retconned out like 7 rl years ago with the second Codex. Then what transpired afterwards was to be several more rl years of adjustment, infighting, doctrinal confusion, and quiet clinging onto the old way (even by ranking people in the faction).

Shallam's patrons tried to push clarification (with varying degrees of success) through dozens of ways, but you can probably see how well that went. Houses, Gods, city, everything got axed. It was easier to destroy the whole faction that struggle with any player trying to reimagine or reimplement their own version of the ethos. 

I don't think we have any holy books anymore. At least not any one central to the doctrine yet (I'm not sure anyone has wanted one up to now). The core message from the second codex is still valid. Good isn't about morals or a state of mind anymore. It's an actual thing, like the force from Star Wars (without the stupid mitichlorians). Deucora have canonical connection to it, claim dominion over it, and all the lower case-good that everyone and their mother tries to associate with got and continues to get axed, laughed at, and openly shamed.

Ayami

I honestly assumed the holy codex disappeared with Shallam and only copies of it remained.

Aldair

Aminah said:

I would have to say, if it is the case that everything in the past about Good is no longer true or relevant, then those things have to be removed from the game. If unchanging things can be changed by Gods, well... you see why I call it propaganda again!

TL;DR delete the holy codex and I'll call it even

The Holy Codex and the Codex of Light were written as a guide for the Holy Church. The Holy Church no longer exists and it had a mission quite different than what Targossas is going for. The first time the "modern" understanding of what Good is in Achaea appeared is in Mithraea's treatise on Good.  If you are curious about how all of this ties together and makes perfect sense, feel free to hit Aldair up in game.

Tael

Aminah said:

I would have to say, if it is the case that everything in the past about Good is no longer true or relevant, then those things have to be removed from the game. If unchanging things can be changed by Gods, well... you see why I call it propaganda again!

TL;DR delete the holy codex and I'll call it even

Functionally, it was deleted.

You don't have to go back and delete all references to the old constitution just because you have a new one. It's still a historical document. It still exists as a text in the world. It's not like everyone's memory got wiped and the pages just disappeared. Plenty of characters have a history with Shallam and the old Good and that history didn't just go away. When Ayami says it was "essentially retconned", that should not be understood as literally retconned.

But Aurora and Deucalion were very clear that the Holy Codex and all that came before was just wrong. Or, if you don't like that perspective, you could interpret it as them coming along and founding a new faction dedicated to different ideals that just happens to use the same name. Note crucially that the latter still precludes devotionists from gaining power from the "old Good" - devotionists get their power from the Gods who grant that power and the gods of the old Good are literally dead. You could certainly be a priest of the old Good (and I'm pretty sure there are a few players who do in fact roleplay that way), but that's a "priest" in the sense of the profession, not the class. That class Priest involves a person being able to perform magic via power granted to them by gods. The gods who grant that power have changed and so have their demands on the people who want to wield that power.

And, either way, it has been made very, very, very clear that the current faction calling itself Good is not the same as the old faction and that the Holy Codex does not in any way apply to them.

Hellen

Chaos was Eris' lulz land until Babel came along and made it much better. Interesting story about that one, Flair apparently played that role for like, a decade until the Garden decided that Chaos needed some Lovecraftian Love. Nature was possibly more cringe-worthy than Erisian Chaos until very recently. Hashan had a social revolution that left it one House poorer but with a much better base than before. Numerous Gods have made revisions to their own teachings.

Things change. By that logic, -everything- is propaganda, including what the old Te'Serra Alliance gave out. Is that a bad thing? No. But that doesn't necessarily mean that these new things need to give credit to the old. Quite the contrary, they can easily ignore the old in favour of the new, because that's how we get things to move on. Shallam never would have become anything near Targossas without getting all their Gods axed and the new ones telling them that while admirable, they were wrong. Is this a change for the better or worse? Can't say. I don't play Good any more. But its clearly doing good things for them.

While it might suck, pulling back the benefits of a class (or two!) can be a good thing overall. Because really, what was Cyrene -really- doing for Good? Name three concrete things that wasn't just spreading goodwill for it or giving it a good face. That's not what Good needs right now, clearly. The Bloodsworn know what Good needs, and its not Cyrene. Well, unless Cyrene were to go full throttle on the whole 'Good' thing.

Aminah

I understand what you guys are saying. I did not understand, however, that these were defunct artifacts of a time gone by. That is immensely important. I didn't know that as a new player, and I don't think most players I've talked to IG know that. I've been mentioning so often the Holy Codex and people just nod and say "yeah, it's weird that it changed."

And I would say, deleting is a better solution. It is terribly inconsistent to have them existing. It opens a door for someone to RP saying "look, gods of good have gotten wrong again," The gods of good aren't omnipotent. Realms like love, sin, the sky, darkness, are so different from the realm of Good because Good itself comes from creation as an unchanging force.

What do you guys think about this?

Hellen

To be fair, none of the Gods are omnipotent. They can be wrong and have their flaws. They're more like the Greco-Roman gods. Zeus and Hephaestus and Mars and so on, all with their little flaws and small touches that emulate humanity in their own little ways. The Gods of Good aren't the same Gods as before.

Antidas

I've been wondering if I really wanted to reply to this thread for a while - I guess I will. @Aminah, the biggest thing that seems to jump out at me is that you (or your character) dislikes how Targossas defines and plays "Good" and wants to do it your own way. Many people in this thread have been telling you that there's only one way to really do it, which is our way. This is in part true, but I actually don't agree with it entirely.

Here's the thing. If you want to play "Good" different than what Targossas and the Bloodsworn define it to be, more power to you! I think thats a great thing. That being said, you have to recognize that Devotion is a skill controlled by the Bloodsworn. You can play "Good" however you want to play it, but you have to be prepared to face the consequences of that decision - in this case, that will mean your loss of Devotion. I think that if you do chose to remain priest and basically chose to play "Good" your own way, it will most likely put you in direct conflict with Targossas, and could quite honestly cause a pretty interesting storyline - so more power to you! Just like in everything else, though, as I stated above, you gotta be prepared to face the consequences of those decisions, whatever they may be.

Melodie

Halos said:

Whoa, kind've late to this thread. 

re: no more devotionists in Cyrene, it's a good change (get it). Tbh, quite a few (Targ players) quietly been looking for reasons to rip devo out of Cyrene's hands for actual years. Looking down on them, killing their devo clan, and bullying them didn't work. Subtle wasn't working.

 

Morthif

Just as a side note:
 Remember this is ALL @Melodie's fault.

Ayami

Aminah said:

I understand what you guys are saying. I did not understand, however, that these were defunct artifacts of a time gone by. That is immensely important. I didn't know that as a new player, and I don't think most players I've talked to IG know that. I've been mentioning so often the Holy Codex and people just nod and say "yeah, it's weird that it changed."

And I would say, deleting is a better solution. It is terribly inconsistent to have them existing. It opens a door for someone to RP saying "look, gods of good have gotten wrong again," The gods of good aren't omnipotent. Realms like love, sin, the sky, darkness, are so different from the realm of Good because Good itself comes from creation as an unchanging force.

What do you guys think about this?

Unfortunately, you're right that a lot of people don't get it. People involved in Good, or who fight against Good (Mhaldor/Babel) tend to, of course. Neutral-aligned people who have no reason to care about Good (which is most of Cyrene) don't tend to get the lore related to it. This is another reason why Cyrene having Good classes was an issue, in my opinion. There was just a ton of misinformation being given to Cyrenian devotionists simply because the average Cyrenian has no need or reason to go to Targossas and read their library.

There's no real reason to delete every mention of the holy codex though. I'm fairly sure the actual holy codex no longer exists, and that's good enough. OOCly, you just have to accept that this is the way things are, and ICly yes, gods can be wrong, but probably a bit less wrong than the random mortal you met raving about the damn Targossians.