Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
- 6.2K All Categories
- 3.1K Everything Achaea
- 1.5K North of Thera
- 26 Archives of the Terraformer
- 257 The Matsuhama Arena
- 885 The Golden Dais of Creation
- 299 The Scarlattan Theatre
- 149 The Blank Canvas
- 2K Getting Help
- 412 General Questions
- 258 Quick Class Questions
- 1.3K Tech Support
- 313 Client Help
- 486 Curing Systems and Scripts
- 841 Off-Topic
- 255 The Wander Inn
- 586 The Universal Membrane
- 298 Class Discussions
- 298 Individual Class Sections
- 20 Alchemist
- 9 Apostate
- 30 Blademaster
- 9 Depthswalker
- 14 Druid
- 4 Infernal
- 20 Jester
- 19 Magi
- 34 Monk
- 11 Occultist
- 8 Paladin
- 7 Priest
- 29 Runewarden
- 18 Sentinel
- 26 Serpent
- 20 Shaman
- 9 Sylvan
Comments
I didn't necessarily say that the whole city had to be unified behind it Mhaldor or Targossas-style, but it just has to have a recognisable world identity. Just its mercenary/scholar status, if done well, is scary enough - the other 'traditional' factions will always be wary of it and never want to piss it off or would always try to influence it, making it a very interesting middle ground to fight political-style battles. Meanwhile, the Darkwalkers at the top will be observing and manipulating the other factions to achieve what they want, which would generally be influence everywhere. But to get to somewhere like this, you would need the talent - you need to have things that other people want - and that's something you have to find a way to attract.
The Hashan of old was already somewhat like this, but unfortunately its reputation for OOCness preceded itself and the stronger leaders of the time faded away. None of this may work out in practice, but that's how I dream!
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
Mercenary status doesn't work that well.
Firstly, that's something that you need the fighters to back up. Hashan just doesn't have them.
Secondly, most organizations like to fight their own battles and don't need or want mercenaries.
Thirdly, and most importantly, the big thing about mercenaries is that mercenaries fight for other causes. They don't have causes of their own. The mercenary city is only a good factional identity for a faction full of people who just want to fight and don't give a damn about the reasons or the RP.
Let's put it this way: Which would be more fulfilling? A relationship based solely on shiny things, or a relationship based on actually caring?
He seems to be almost (if not) God level powerful too.
Rip little weird girl
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
And this:
Shirszae said:
--
Honestly, when I was young it was a full time job sniffing out the Twilighters in our orgs and it was awesome. They played it amazingly. Everyone was afraid of Twilighters embedding themselves in the hierarchy of their orgs. This is not so anymore. Hashan was always fairly "quiet" in that regard. It is so easy to use that to your advantage.
[snip]
Like steel on stone, the preternatural tones of Parni deSangre thunder
throughout Creation, "Maybe one of you will survive."
Which is why the rest of us should at least understand the frustrations of players in Hashan. Logistics dictate that aligning a class to be used by only a sixth (or, let's be honest, at least a fourth due to the relative high number of Hashani) of the playerbase would be improbable, and that's not the fault of their players.
Do you honestly think that Targossas' factional identity comes from Paladin and Priest - classes that existed for over a decade before Targossas did and yet remain almost entirely unchanged - much at all?
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
I won't say that I had no part in undermining that, but with a directionless Hashan, everybody thinks their vision is the right vision. If you weren't Darkwalker, that vision didn't include Twilight. If you weren't Ouranian, it didn't include Ourania. Knowledge of the coming Renaissance further enflamed these discussions and political maneuvers.
Then came the Renaissance. I only have one good thing to say about the Renaissance for Hashan, that it mostly weeded out those who didn't put city first, because everything else was destroyed or majorly changed. The leaders sunk a lot of time - a lot of time - into coming up with new ideas for both city and House; an opportunity unique to Hashan that IMO was squandered. Tons of ideas were tossed around and refined amongst the leaders.
During this process, we were driven away from any divinely-focused ideas. In fact, Twilight ( or the Twilight active at the time ) said he would prefer that Twilight no longer be associated with Hashan. Ultimately, we were handed this Wellspring idea, one that, as far as I can recall, we the leaders didn't actually come up with.
So the Wellspring was happening. I don't know how many of us actually approved the idea, but it was what the admin said we were going to do. The problem with the Wellspring is that, well, its not an ideology. Its a city-wide focus in the sense that its something we do, internally, but it gave us no political/ideological stance in the world. IMO, it watered us down further past pre-Renaissance Hashan.
We were distanced further from the gods that previously supported us. We took the Night theme, subtracted the gods and their ideologies that made up the Night, and were expected to hold to and support this as an ideology. We got the cool Court of Shadows moniker, but both that and the help file on Hashan implies that the political fighting remains internal. On top of all this, at the very base of our "ideology" is this non-existent Wellspring of power, that will never be put to use, or actually studied, because it can't. Our ideology is pretending to try and achieve tangible, mechanical effects that won't come. You can't give Hashani +1 INT or whatever for being Hashani, you can't give them EQ reduction.
For the rest of the cities, its about why they're doing what they're doing, that makes them special. You can't disprove Good, you can't prove that the Good ideology can't change things, and the same for the other factions. For Hashan, its what its doing, which can easily be proven to be pointless and ineffective, undermining Hashan's core.
What we do is very important, more important than the ideology itself, because if we're not -doing- anything the Divine don't take notice at all. We can give it a purpose later. What matters is that we're roleplaying.
The Institute (Hashan by proxy) did not get the best labs on Achaea and then got inspired to roleplay. It was the other way around. We got those labs because we impressed people, and those people asked the Divine for us. We raised about half a million gold in about three days and the city covered the other half. Ourania was a constant, constant source of influence for the alchemists, whether or not they knew it, because she was always poking her head in on the Institute channel and listening to what we were doing. Not because she was told to by her higher-ups, but because we were -constantly- talking, discussing, teaching, learning, and experimenting! If we weren't doing any of that she would have left long ago. It was because of the alchemists of Hashan's constant, constant questioning and poking at reality itself that things happened for Hashan. It was why we learned Antimone's name, got her advice, and were given several contracts by the Divine themselves!
While I'm at it, props to @Ourania. If you weren't there, the clan wouldn't have had half the fun it did. I can't point to exactly what scenarios you played, but I know that Twilight wasn't active at that time, and that things slowed down after you went dormant.
What would have happened if Inc/Vhalkier had continued to lead the Institute? What would have happened had I never come about? What would have happened if Vayne didn't enter later to revitalize me and the Institute when we were running out of steam and inspired us to act like a House? I can't tell you that things would have happened that way, but I suspect the Institute would have died about a third of the way through.
Ourania told me "The Night is Hashan. Hashan is the Night". I've been saying it for a long, long time now, but apparently people don't quite get what I'm getting at here. Like the city did for the Institute, the Divine are doing for Hashan. They've given us a blank check to define ourselves with. The Somatikos and Krymenian are still very, very able to be changed right now. They are still in their infancy. We have a budding culture. If you want to change something, now is the time. This is the time to set in protections from the corruption that infested Hashan (and still have it's sticky tendrils there).
Like it or not, I suspect we have a window of maybe a few months now to answer "What's a Hashan?". Do not fuck up several months of cultural shift and civil war we had to excise the corruption that was so deep in Hashan. Make it count.
I was asked to step down because "I lacked original ideas and initiative"... for getting robbed out of my original idea and blocked out of my initiative. Kind of upsetting, so I can relate with the feeling of helplesness.
There's nothing wrong with being a materialist state in a game where we already have 3-4 (depending on whether you count Ashtan) theological states--in fact I think that's refreshing. You have a lot of freedom to define yourselves without those rigid constructs. Darkwalkers still have a place there, and Ouranians still have a place there, but so do people unconnected and unconcerned with either of those gods. The reason Hashan has seen such a population boom and rebirth of enthusiasm is because your ideals are no longer shackled to Twilight/Ourania specifically, and people from all walks can find a niche there. I think if you got your wish, Jacen, you'd see Hashan's population shrink by a sizable factor.
I don't really get your concern about tangible outcomes, either. Good's driving mandate is to destroy Mhaldor and Ashtan, but that will never happen either, so why is the lack of mechanical, tangible benefits any more of a restriction for you than it is for Good/Evil/Chaos? If you're saying you need to see "results" of your work, that's valid, but that just takes a decent Patron. (And I might know of one)
I'm not saying that what we do isn't important. I'm saying that if what we do is the basis for our city - especially doing something that is so internal - that isn't a feature that differentiates us from the others. If you have a why underneath it, you're protected in a sense. Targossas can get their butts kicked six ways from Sunday, but as long as they believe that Mhaldor and Ashtan and Hashan are wrong, their ideology, their core, hasn't been harmed. They can build their roleplay on their ideology whether they're winning or losing, because its independent of that. Same for the other two.
Hashan's struggle isn't against other cities, or other ideologies or other entities. Hashan's core, post-Renaissance, does not stand in opposition to anything else, nor does it point to denying the success of anything else. Hashan's core tenets are defined against mechanics that will not happen, but in a sense that's very different from the other ideologies. The other factions have their end goal that won't happen, sure, but they can also have objectives, measure successes, and analyze failures in opposing the other factions. Detonate a tank in Mhaldor. Convert someone away from Good. Raise/raze shrines, spread vines, exterminate, debate. These are tangible things that are done in the name of those ideologies, and Hashan doesn't have that.
Yes, what we do is super important. That's what's going to attract people, activity, and so on. But more important is the why behind it, because that's what justifies us, gives us conflict, and makes us unique among factions. Its what give the flavor and meaning to the things that we do. Without that, you could just go do it in another faction to the same result.
@Aerek
I'm not asking for a divine mandate, or a theology. I'm asking for an ideology, something that defines the will of Hashan. Something that gives a reason to engage in conflict, for people to go and effect Hashan's will in the world. What we have been given is a neutral, don't care what's going on in the world stance.
Will it cull the population down? Certainly. But if we're to be the shadow-themed (not anymore, right?) Cyrene, I wish that would just come out and be said, and the effort and investment stop being wasted.
I spent a lot of time on the wiki and forums before making my character, getting acquainted with the classes and especially the organisations as they now exist. I ended up going Hashan, despite my memories of it as being OOC and directionless, because the whole Darkness thing seems awesome to me. The Depthswalker class also seems up my alley as well. I realize that there isn't a unified sense of 'Darkness' in Hashan, even though that's what I'll be going for sort of, but honestly I enjoy that. Mhaldorian (and, to a lesser extent, Ashtani) roleplay seems a bit confining to me. I feel like current Hashan seems to occupy a good balance of having a possible identity without it being forced down your throat.
I don't know. For me, I have an idea for my character, Depthswalker and Hashan both fit it (and each fits together in my mind) but I'm not worried about it being factional. I'm going to play how I want, my character will interpret her skills in line with her ideology. Really I wish some of the hardcoded faction aspects were gone. Necromancers in Targossas makes no sense, obviously, but I think Targossas making that law would suffice. No need for Anathema.
tl;dr Depthswalker is cool. Hashan is cool. They're cool together and I'm content to RP that.
You're wishing that your city was homogeneous, that everyone in the city operated under the same guiding principles, and that everything the city did advanced that one driving goal. I'm saying that's dull, and we already have 4 cities doing that, and it's really not as fun as it sounds. That's actually Cyrene's problem right now; it was diverse and dynamic, but it's become homogeneous and has been bleeding players that don't conform to the majority stereotype. You could say that Cyrene is more "united" than ever, as a result, but it's also become very stagnant.
From this side, it really feels like there's a lot of hate from people who have been given everything I'm asking for, who are saying we have such a great opportunity and its so cool, but no one will make the switch over to Hashan. They still somehow deem it not worth it.
I do appreciate your unique perspective, though. You were that guy in Cyrene. You probably have a superior perspective on it. After nearly a decade of trying, along with many other people, I just don't think it can happen.
Fingers: yolo
kthx