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Comments
You don't have to be a theocracy. But you do have to embrace the factional identity you were meant to be -- or form a new one, if you so wish, but be consistent about it.
What is it you're looking for? My opinion doesn't matter, since I don't play there. We've heard tons and tons aboit what Hashan doesn't want, what Hashan isn't/shouldn't be, so: what do you, as players, feel you need to make Hashan the place you want it to be?
Jacen seems to want a light nuke, if I understand correctly? Not sure how that'd work, but okay. It's something. Everyone else who plays there- are you arguing everything's fine and nothing needs to change, or are you looking for something from the admins?
- Outsider criticizes X city
- Citizens of X city defend their state
- Former citizen of X city chimes in saying that this is why they quit the city
- Citizens vehemently deny there is any such issue and sling mud at former citizen (or vice versa)
- Some outlier citizen tries to address some problems that the city faces
- General forum notes that such problems can only be fixed if the city as a whole is willing to make concessions with regards to certain issues (usually patron related)
- Citizens of X become rabidly defensive over their rights to do whatever they want. They want admin to do *something* but don't want to make the sacrifices necessary for that to happen. Admin give up, patron of the month goes dormant after dealing with the same issues over and over.
- repeated ad nauseum until Shallam'd
My current best case scenario would be the City of Darkness.
Darkness is the one true reality, the unbiased core of everything. The Bloodsworn, Sartan, the Nature goddesses, etc are all either deceiving their followers, or are blind to the true nature of things. Its Hashan's job to reveal Darkness to those followers, to subvert their attempts to impose false ideologies on the rest of Sapience. Nature, Good, and Evil are all perversions of the true reality, they're all needless impositions that prevent us from realizing our true nature. Chaos is a different beast, the ruin of everything. They must be stopped because they can prevent us from achieving our goals.
Twilight and Ourania fit well under that umbrella, I think, though the secrecy/deception of Twilight's realm should either be filtered out, or focused entirely externally, never to be used within Hashan. That ought to help foster a lot more trust betweek the Darkwalkers and Hashan.
Other tidbits, Alchemy and Astronomy are both considered the chief portals through which we discern information about Darkness. Think Achaean quantum physics.
Maybe the Wellspring is a font of Dark power. A Darkfire nuke, or something. Something to learn about Darkness from.
--
That's a rough draft of my thoughts, probably lots of holes to consider, but at least it something.
A big problem with Hashan is that the Darkie path has always been associated with the long con. Ideally you would give the city a particular 'face', like the whole pursuit of knowledge/alchemical experiments/astronomy whatsits, and then subtly indoctrinate and let players into the 'fold' as they progress.
Unfortunately the nature of the game is such that the long con doesn't work any more than it does tedious and time-consuming house requirements. Eventually, as people slack on their involvement in the city and would rather just stand around at Crossroads swapping saliva and finding potential saliva swap-ees, you can't find people suitable for bringing into the fold. They don't want there to be a 'behind the curtains' cabal anymore because that (potentially) gets in the way of their bodily fluid exchanges (Note: It doesn't) and being let into the fold requires work. God forbid there be any sort of work or contribution involved while being in a city. The mask becomes the reality and that's how the city dies or becomes wildly successful (like old Ashtan under the "Chaos = Freedom" banner).
The current player culture, unfortunately, does not allow for subtlety, you either have to leap with both legs or not at all
To be honest, I think the most epic event would be for half an Order to reveal themselves to actually be Darkie in spite of their Oaths and corrupt their patron with powerz of darkness, potentially overthrowing a city or Order (at least for a time). It would be like Superior Spiderman kind of epic. I like Superior Spiderman.
Two things: first, people are overthinking factionalism in Hashan. @Rangor made a really good point about @Neraeos - you don't necessarily need a philosophy as such to be a great faction. You don't need to be communism, or capitalism or whatever - you can just be The Red Team, provided that the Red Team has a cool and interesting identity. If, as the person behind your characters, you think about all the factions this way roleplay actually becomes a lot easier and more sensible. Darkness should, for the most part, be a set of tools and tropes that Dark-aligned characters can use to advance the interests of Team Darkness. The philosophy of Darkness is great for rituals and RP and what-have-you, but let's remember: Darkness claims to have the secret knowledge that unlocks the universe. Are people really expecting that if you get to OR8, an imaginary sect in a text game will reveal the truth of the universe to them? Just jump in and go with it.
Second, the one thing that Darkness and @Twilight need to remember once and for all is this: no shitting where you eat. As a player with a huge interest in there being as many great factions as possible, I was incredibly disappointed to see that the Darkies were playing aggressive politics in Hashan again. People forget how soiled and hopeless the Darkwalker brand was once Original!Twilight went dormant for x hundred years. You couldn't RP because everyone immediately assumed you would fuck them. "Let's be friends!" ("Haaaaa, I'm not falling for that, I know how you people go!"), "Here's some information I found" ("Haaaaaaaa, you're all such liars"), "I'd like to run for office, be a secretary, whatever" ("Haaaaaaaaaa, and then find out you betrayed me two minutes later?"). Darkies in Hashan have so many ridiculous RP advantages - you don't even need to play politics. You ARE the city. It doesn't really matter if an Aegean or an Ouranian or a Sartai or whoever is Seneschal or Regent. Control should be spiritual rather than temporal. It's... demeaning for Twilight and His order to play politics in Hashan - because sometimes you lose. The only winning move is not to play. The Patron has a dozen different opportunities to weave themselves into the fabric of a city and that's how they "control" things.
Way back when, Keresis tried to boss Mhaldor around and @Khoraji was Tyrannus, and he refused to comply on CT, and basically said This is Mhaldor, it's Sartan's city, and it always will be. And every single Mhaldorian on CT replied with "Hail Sartan, Hail Tyrannus" (or similar) - no co-ordination, just instinct - because of course it was. Mhaldor was Sartan, everyone knew it. (It was pretty fucking cool). And yes, that's easier with a dictatorship but it's not something you achieve by winning an election and getting a majority on the city council. It's a long term, subtle, roleplay based move.
Darkness is so potentially cool, it's a shame when it's done badly. A big part of fixing that is just chanting over and again: "No shitting where you eat, no shitting where you eat". Cos again, the Darkies are having to clean up the turd they shat on to their own plates, and Hashan is going to spend another few decades obsessed with internal strife instead of playing on the world stage.
Yes, you can be Aegean or a Pandoran in Hashan -- you can even be a Regent if you do well enough -- but you should recognise that Twilight and Ourania are the Patrons of the Night, and that their word regarding the faction is final.
Except that's not how it rolls in reality. You have citizens, some high ranking citizens, who openly and proudly diss one god or the other (or both). This is something you should not be allowed to do, because at the end of the day, Twirania (Oulight?) are the embodiments of Night. They are the Night.
So there is a need to first drill into people's heads that dissing one of the two Night gods is not something that will be tolerated. If there had been non-Darkwalkers willing to do this and put their foot down, then sure, then the actual Darkwalkers could have stayed in the background. But no one did, not with any real intensity.
Eh, I dunno. That's now how I'd play it personally. Forcing someone to recognise something that obviously is usually just ends up with both parties looking a bit dumb. You don't need someone to recognise that Twilight and Ourania are patrons of the night, or patrons of Hashan. They are. You already won.
The open dissing, that's a problem I agree, but usually if you haven't been busy SHITTING WHERE YOU EAT you can almost always get a good majority of people to oppose actively being disrespectful to the city patron. If you can't, the patron probably fucked up.
That said, I rather like the idea of a more or less anti-Divine faction. It wouldn't even need to directly oppose Divine, it could oppose mortals being ruled by Divine. You still respect the Gods, you can still follow their philosophy as a personal choice. Hashan could look for ways to protect themselves against Divine intervention, make a pact with Twilight, perhaps in his grand scheme it fits him just fine that the other Divine lose control over mortals. Hashan could range from pitying theocracy cities for being under the rule of a God, to actively fighting them to free them (For Democracy!). It has a lot of options, really, varying in how zealous you want to be, but Hashan would need to accept Twilight or Ourania's patronage to ensure an alliance (of convenience, perhaps) so they can make this dream a reality, perhaps until they find another powerful patron.
In this scenario, one could explain the Night to others as the dream of a world that is ruled by mortals, not Gods. The main risk is that you have to ensure it doesn't become opposing Gods in their entirety just for being Gods. As stated before, Gods are powerful beings and they have a big impact on the world, so you don't go pissing one off without having the backing of one on your side. Hashan shouldn't have an issue with neutral Gods who offer guidance, but they would with gods like Sartan, Aurora, Deucalion and even Gaia and Artemis. And obviously the Chaos Court.
Just for kicks, let us try and set the picture of what this Hashan would be:
-----
Hashan embraces its independence, claiming that through sheer will, science and the mind, mortality can reach great heights of power. It rejects the 'stunting' concepts of faith and religion, proclaiming itself free from such services that yield no true growth.
Hashan has a massive reform in the city, its people becoming devoted to the "great cause" of Hashan's ascension. The city becomes industrial and provides several research facilities focused upon different tasks.
The Dome of the Triad is remade into a facility focused upon accumulating and experimenting with Divine Essence. Deep within the facility you will find divine items of power, including one of Indrani's swords, as well as Thoth's mask and other such relics. A special program will be developed within to attempt to empower 'chosen soldiers' to ascend with god-like strength...so far the results have led to nothing but disintegration into ash.
The Academy becomes a hotspot of ritual construction, forbidden magical study, and on the side a tinker that sells odd items such as collars used to enslave the spectres (free for citizens). At the end of the hall, a giant constructed orb stands, watched over by 4 channelers. The orb empowers a massive shield around Hashan, as the people no longer depend on the Gods to save them from destructive events...for clearly the Gods cannot even save themselves.
A resource team will be found to be in charge of a group of workers seen chopping at the trees in the Ithmia, harvesting the lumber to fuel Hashan's efforts.
The Menagerie is transformed into a testing facility upon the wildlife of Achaea, attempting to capture and analyze as many as they can. They seek to understand the makeup of these creatures and discover their secrets. Within the facility can be found experiments to augment and transform these creatures into powerful forms, seeking to bolster Hashan's strength with these monstrosities.
This happens in any game though, its not specific to Achaea. Its not specific to IRE. That's like saying if people are being disrespectful to a teacher/professor/waitress they probably fucked up. No, its that people can be assholes if they don't get what they want, flat out. You can do nothing wrong and if the right group of people just don't like you and make it enough of a thing because THEY feel slighted because you didn't (in the case of Achaea) favour them, give them x/y/z position, it can be ridiculous to try and work with those people. Its bad when you're in that position as a mortal, think about if you were always a divine who had to do all the other stuff the divine do on top of dealing with that level of petty?
I mean your comment is a perfect example of it. If its automatically that someone fucked up that's a Divine because people don't like them, you're just subscribing to mob mentalities and the fact that Divine, for the most part, don't have a lot of recourse.
There have been some super shitty Divine over the years, of course there have been, there have been Divine that have alienated people, chosen quality over quantity, other issues I won't go into that aren't worth it. But starting off with the assumption that if a city rejects a Divine, obviously it was the Divine, is super toxic and definitely not how you solve a problem. So many people treat Divine like they're customer service reps and that's really not their point. There are so many layers to the reason a Divine's preachings might change and people take serious, very real, and toxic reactions to that if it effects them.
@Hataru, oh don't do the "I don't know how long you've played" thing. I'm not going to showboat my qualifications in order to justify having an opinion. I'm fully aware of the potential, and sometimes actual, shittiness of the playerbase but I'm making a distinction between people engaging with the admin as roleplayed characters, and as volunteers. As volunteers, Divine can get treated appallingly, and I think we, as players, owe them an enormous obligation to be civil and constructive. As roleplayed characters though? We owe them nothing, but to respond to them in a way that is consistent with the world of Achaea.
And, in that context, the Divine have enormous advantages. Patrons, particularly. I stand by the statement that if, as a Divine (not as an order, but as the Divine Themselves), you are being actively, directly insulted by members of an organisation that you patron, then you have probably screwed up in some way. You have misplayed the RP advantages available to you. It is a laughable misreading of the situation to say that Divine have little recourse available to them as roleplayed entities. The recourse available to them is enormous, if it is wielded well.
I think the number of situations where characters, as characters have really gone up against a Divine, as a character - is really very small (like the Khoraji thing I mentioned upthread), and of the examples I can think of, whenever it has happened, I think a mis-step by the player behind the Divine has been probably the key contributory factor. And we shouldn't be afraid to say so. Constructive, civil criticism is important and, if you review the forums for at least the last two years, there is exceptionally little criticism of the RP from the Garden so I wouldn't want to overstate the "The Divine are being DRIVEN away by the HORRORS of OPINIONS on the FORUMS!". (NB: I said "overstate" on purpose. I do think people are awful and unfair sometimes, and that is a terrible thing. I'm arguing for a balance).
Also, to be clear, the fuck-ups I'm describing re Hashan and the Darkies upthread are player mistakes, not Divine mistakes. I'm not close enough to the current Hashan thing to unpick how much is Order criticism, how much is Divine criticism, how much is player specific etc etc .
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
2) Divine do not have the advantage you think they do. Being Divine isn't a "whatever whatever I do what I want!" card. You are literally just not correct, there are literal examples of this having happened before. I've seen it happen here and in other games. I'll repeat: that you think automatically that the playerbase being crappy to a Divine automatically means the Divine fucked up and not maybe that the playerbase is being shitty and refusing to change because wah wah snowflakes (and I can and will say snowflakes here because the amount of 'BUT KERESIS ISN'T EVIL' ALIGNED when her whole origin is based off of being Shaitan's in the Elder Wars still gives me nightmares of having to deal with) says a lot.
3) I didn't bring up forums. Why would I bring up forums? The Divine actually have more power on Forums to shut shit down than they do in-game. The Divine can and do ban people for going over the top on forums. A Divine can't shrub a player to stop dissent because that player is being shitty and trying to run a coup (etc.) and players have consistently and without much possible recourse turned on Divine for trying to punish people for being shitty because the playerbase is who spreads rumours and combats them, a Divine isn't here to have a sit down with Hashan and be like "listen this person is a son of a bitch, I know I'm right, here's some logs, read them" where as a player can do exactly that. I really don't think you know much about the reach and power of Divine in Achaea if you think this is the case (especially outside of the theocracies, it could be argued its definitely more possible withint them but still not unfailing - Divine after all can't just shove everyone else, they have to think about retention and the situations, like with Twilight's order and Keresis' where whole orders have been shoved out have been with good IC reasons).
4) Constructive criticism is important. Your "if your city hates you, you fucked up" opinion is neither constructive or civil.
5) Seriously, if a Divine does something major, especially involving their mythos (which is, in my experience >90% of the wah wah) - its probably for a good reason. Like game balance or need. That's why Keresis was switched from neutral-Evil to Evil. I can guarentee you it is likely why you saw some of the more hardlined stuff that happened with Nature Divine that pissed certain parts of Eleusis off. Nothing is done by the Divine without shittons of planning and for good reason for the game. Sometimes its for events, sometimes its to fill a niche, this shit happens.
I think you're underestimating a couple of things. One, people's tendencies to exaggerate the negative and diminish the positive. Twilight's/Darkwalker's mistakes will always have a much greater impact on perception than their successes. See the "coup," which was literally business as usual for Hashan in every sense. How do you even coup a government where you already have a majority?
Anyways, second underestimation is some of the culture that developed in Hashan throughout the years of hanging in limbo. There are neutral parties in Hashan that are going to oppose any remotely factionalized divine interacting with Hashan. They don't have to screw up, that's just the culture of a portion of Hashan.
These people don't resent Twilight because of a clumsy failed coup; these people resent Twilight because other factions hate Darkness and Hashan's association with Twilight brings those other factions into conflict with Hashan. They resent him because Darkness is one of the Big Three enemies of Targossas, and that causes Targossas to raid Hashan. They resent him because the old-school forestal hate for Twilight brings Hashan into conflict with the more militant members of Eleusis.
These people would abandon Twilight in a heartbeat, not because of anything Twilight said or or did to the city, but simply because Twilight has enemies and they desperately want to avoid having enemies, because enemies inevitably lead to conflict and conflict inevitably leads to combat.
There is nothing Twilight can say or do to win these people over. There is no avenue of RP that will convince them to side with him because these people are not opposed to him for RP reasons, though they may come up with RP justifications.
These people are just flat out opposed to PvP and anything that might cause it, and there is no realistic way to overcome that opposition.