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Comments
What you are describing is Cyrene - a city that rejects bad people (and recognises them as such), embraces principles like honour and "ends do not justify the means", and doesn't have a fanatical drive causing them to commit violence.
Unless by "actively opposes" you mean that you want a city that militarily opposes the bad people, while simultaneously trying to be "good". But that's a disastrous idea. First, you would end up splitting the militant players between Shallam and Targossas, leaving both factions pretty anaemic. Second, you'd have the endless internecine conflict between Targossas and Shallam, just like Cyrene-Targossas relations, but worse and likely less interesting. And then, to really drive it all home, Shallam would remain mired in the same problems that prompted the creation of Targossas in the first place - if you want a city to be good without being hardline fanatical Good, you will always have a huge segment of the population opposing any kind of military action, insisting that that isn't what good people should do. You just can't have a militant city of good - it's a self-defeating proposition.
Of course, given what I constantly heard when I was Cyrene, you might mean 'actually Targossas is just as evil as Mhaldor', in which case I'm rolling my eyes because that's a) forum roleplay and b) just nonsensical given any kind of analysis at all.
It's perfectly possible for Eleusis to go to war with Targossas, but still allow individual Targossans inside unless the individuals have proven themselves dangerous. Not all war has to be total war and even total war does not have to preclude fraternisation.
You could easily come up with RP justifications for Targossas to allow Mhaldorians in - what better way to convert them? Someone in Targossas could say "our city and our gods are so strong that we have nothing to fear from allowing them inside, and much to gain from letting them see firsthand the error of their ways and the higher path of the enlightened". There are a lot of ways this could be phrased that keep Targossas's mission clear and strong, but allow for more interaction with players in opposing factions.
Ideological conflict does not have to mean social isolation.
Not to mention, Mhaldorians still interact with non-Mhaldorians. Not being able to walk into Eleusis doesn't mean you can't talk to Eleusians and preach at them.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
Of course, if you want to argue brand of roleplaying X is better than Y, then because: ideals are not characters. Characters are histories and beliefs about many, many ideals. Ideals are an idea. Roleplaying an ideal flawlessly means cutting out most of your character's life. Why do they believe in that ideal? What would make them forsake it?
If you can go from that approach, even your preaching roleplay could have fire like it otherwise might never have. Without that life, struggles, flaws, failures and all, what's left but meaningless words?
And even that's fine too, if you enjoy it. It's just not interesting to me personally.
I'm not sure where you're even getting this concept that people who live in an ideological state can't be flawed, or have struggles and histories and such. Just because you live in, say, Targossas, doesn't mean you can't question inwardly if you're truly doing the right thing, or if the current Dawnlord (no actual reference meant!) is perhaps too weak compared to the previous one, or even what to get your fellow Targossian for their birthday.
The problem is that you can't have strong factional ideologies if everyone's best friend is an ideological enemy. It's a lot like playing the 'one good drow' in most other roleplaying games: it's interesting the first time, but when 90% of the game is doing that it's terrible and annoying.
Not true. We ask them to recite an oath "I declare Rangor to be a dumbass" and then we allow them in. You'd be surprised how many roam our streets
(for those of you devoid of a sense of humour, that was a joke)
"Because Aurora/Sartan says so" is fine as a belief system for a religious zealout, and that might be a fun role to play for you, but it's just exhausting to deal with for me, and hard to take seriously when I'm playing the role of the "unwashed heathen" for the 143rd time. Yes, I get it, you're from X, you believe Y, and you're here to tell me why I'm wrong. Can we skip to the end? You're not saying anything I haven't heard before, and I have other things I could be doing right now.
There are some exceptions to the rule. @Aodfionn and @Halos could carry on reasonable discourse without immediately jumping to the stereotypical tropes. I enjoy hearing @Herenicus' sermons and conversion attempts even though I avoid most Mhaldorian missionaries like the plague. These people are fun to discuss theology with because they take time to put a fresh spin on things, they take care to make sure their points are supported by logical arguments, not just faith-based assertions, and most importantly, they are careful to either concede some points when you make a good argument to them, or at least credit you with a valid perspective. That's fun. That's interesting. And unfortunately that's getting harder and harder to find these days.
So as a rule, I agree with Nim, "preacher RP" bores me. I'm not opposed to it, but you have to prove to me that you're going to be worth my time before I give you my time.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
As for us still having Shallam being a terrible idea, I disagree. Targossas ended up losing all of its moderates anyway (either to Cyrene or other cities, or those who simply stopped playing), and Shallam had a very healthy population that could easily have been distributed (particularly before the hardliners took over).
The main competition for members would have been with Cyrene, really, who would naturally draw in the "moderates" who don't want to fight. Which would leave the ones who actually do want to fight, but do so with Honour and Integrity. Furthermore, a "good" faction that is not fanatically hardcore is not doomed to conflict, as the primary conflict always was between the moderates and the hardliners. With Targossas catering to the hardliners of Good, that would be greatly minimized.
Granted, Cyrenians can still do some PvP, but it has to be more personal (duels, hunting thieves, etc), but ultimately it is mostly defensive. But still, it is true that for those of us interested in (lowercase) good RP - particularly centered on Honour and Chivalry - it is the best place available in this day and age.
People who go spouting stuff without any logic or sense to it are like door-knocking missionaries. no one (except my dad) enjoys that.
Targossas basically declared that we were fair game, and had no special protection. So we revoked the special dispensation Targossians had about preaching (which all other cities are banned from doing). Targossas' leadership THEN escalated the issue and issued an ultimatum about removing this ban (and performed a few acts of provocation before that ultimatum ended). And at that point we voted to keep the ban.
Sure, on a practical level the end result is the same, but if "do something that makes Cyrene decide to not keep Devotion" was the goal, that could have been achieved through far more straightforward means.
For example, it would be completely in character and downright honest of Targossas to just tell Cyrene they need to stop "aiding and abetting the Chaos-worshippers of Ashtan", or Devotionists would be pulled out. That'd be a completely understandable request given the teachings of Good, and Cyrene would almost certainly have refused.
End result would have been the same, but Targossas would have come out of it seeming a lot less callous and deceitful. Granted, ICly you don't care what others think, but OOCly it shouldn't be surprising if few people actually bother learning the theology of Targossas when it has such terrible PR issues.
(Blades of Valour): Draekar says: "Synbios if sunbeams sparkle off that I'll kill you where you stand."
(Party) Halos says, "Disbar?"
(Party) Draekar says, "You know here we have disbar."
(Party) Draekar says, "And over there we have datbar."
@Verrucht should get in contact with Cyrene's Patron (can't remember who it is currently atm) and start making plans for RP events. Symbolic cutting the chains, a new dawn for the city, burning effigies of Targossas leadership...
wait...a burning effigy of @Deucalion...does that even work? He's already on fire....
Yea, that one!
Targossas didn't hand him over because Cyrene was trying to force their own foreign laws down their throat while holding a -divine- hostage.
Like @Aodfionn said in his post, asking Targossas to respect an anti-theft treaty it never signed is as lolworthy as us asking Cyrene to punish their citizens for hunting New Hope. And trust me, I've seen a few.
TL;DR: If Cyrene wanted to be proactive about this theft, it would have instead pushed for formalizing an anti-theft treaty with Targ. It instead decided to open itself to being cut off devotion.
It's not like Cyrene was declaring war on Targossas here... all that was done was treat it the same as it does other cities, just like Targossas was doing. THEN, I imagine, that was seized upon by Targ's leadership as a good opportunity to finally get the Devotionists out of Cyrene.
To be clear, I don't object to that final decision. It's probably for the best. I DO think a more direct approach would have been better for Targossas' image (which is already troubled enough).