The Mhaldor Thread.

Tvistor

Cartoony Evil is so overdone in Mhaldor. You need more style than feeding kittens to piranhas.

Nellaundra

What if they're Madelyne's kittens?

Delphinus

Xenomorph said:

Believe it or not, the Garden holds a magnifying glass up to potentials. For those that hate me, and rightfully so, this is nothing more than an opportunity to take your digs at me. For example, you have a Delphinus "like" on your post. Next to Cooper, I can't think of a person who hates me worse. For as intelligent as he is, he's only fooling himself that the man behind the curtain isn't a clever and seasoned leader. As much as I hate him, even I know he's a good leader to his people, and probably cares a great deal for his faction like I do mine. I just don't stop to say things like that. Neither do most of you.

Everything I've heard of you, at least from the Mhaldorian side of things, seems absolutely great. The few posts I've read, and the atmosphere you've brought to the city, have proven me wrong in judging your ability to lead Mhaldor.

Let me lay it out: I don't hate you. I utterly distrust your biases, and not as "Mhaldor's leader" but as "an Achaean leader." It's because of lines like this:

Xenomorph said:

I'll be crystal clear in saying this: If you aren't Mhaldorian, I don't like you. In fact, I probably hate many to most of you depending on history and circumstances. You know me, Xenomorph, at a far glance, from whatever cancer ward you haunt. Only a Mhaldorian, one that has stood by me and worked with me close is going to know the real guy, or makes any impact on any emotional level. The ones that do, know someone that puts loyalty and brotherhood far above his own personal goals.

Many have moved, or at least try to move, beyond that partisan weirdness. This is probably because we're just different kinds of people; there's a level of sympathy that, let's be honest, is skewed in different directions. I accept that. Even so, there's objective merit. Example: I want New Shallam to be a damned compelling entity. I want to see it rise up and be great, because if it does, that's just one more layer of depth in a game I spend time playing. I want them to pick a place that makes sense. To that end, if chopping some trees means Shallam can bring its A-game from there on out, I am utterly willing to take a scripted loss. In the same vein, most of us want to see cities like Hashan and M-town shine.

Bottom line: You see Mhaldor as "your guys," but I see Achaea as "my guys." I think that's mostly where we differ. I could be wrong, and to be honest, I hope I am.

Iocun

@Xenomorph: I neither dislike you, nor your character, personally. And Xenomorph might indeed be a great and loyal guy in your house and city. I have no way of judging that. All I can see from my outside perspective is the image Xenomorph presents to the outside world, and here, he's simply more known for being quick with an obscene insult and for a "kill first, ask later"-attitude than for all the redeeming qualities he may have. Many remember him more as a "thug" than as a calm and calculating strategist, which doesn't help Mhaldor to be perceived as quite the deep-RP city it could be. This doesn't mean your character doesn't have a place in Mhaldor or Achaea, I just question his place as its figurehead.

Oh, and the comment about "good rapiers" wasn't meant as a jibe at your combat abilities. "His rapiers hurt and he curses" are just two of the things that come to my mind first when I think "Xenomorph".

Horatio

Xenomorph said:

Iocun said:

I'm really not quite sure why Xenomorph was picked as city leader. I mean, he makes you lol enough and I guess he's somewhat "badass", but he's just not quite the material for city leader of an RP-heavy city. Having good rapiers and cursing a lot just isn't all it takes.

 -I served as GM of the Infernals Guild in Ashtan back around, oh, 2001-2002 I think it was.

-Anyways. Iocun, I really don't know who you are, but I hope you are happy reaching combat levels I achieved years ago. I may not fight much anymore, but once upon a time I burned babies by the bonfire and smashed in enough heads to make 10 ashtrays for every player. I've forgotten more than you know.

-PS: You should all be a lot more thankful of High Lord Vadimuses. He gave you the ability to compete with the old guard rather than watch you fend for yourself.

Bold point #1: Is it really fair to put GM of the Infernals on your curriculum vitae? It was barely a week long. Hwolf contested you within hours of being elected.

Bold point #2: I can't tell if srs or if forum arpee.  At any rate, you weren't some amazing combatant years ago so stop acting all hard. When it came to the Infernals, you weren't even in the top 5. Add in the rest of Ashtan at that time, and "Xenomorph" and "smashing in heads" were never in the same sentence. 

Bold point #3: C'mon now. You say this as if the "old guard" did everything manually, as if Zmud systems didn't make their rounds back in the day. I'm sure Tranquility didn't use any macros, he typed out all of his monk combos, right? Shakti had no aliases, Estach had no triggers, Dresden used telnet. None of them ever shared information or helped one another out to understand healing and all that. I call bullshit. They walked both ways, uphill, in the snow to the arena with no automapper! I'm sure that Vadi's helped put combat in the hands of so many people who couldn't be assed to do it otherwise, but let's not pretend that all the "old guard" greats did it all on their own.

Xenomorph

Delphinus said:

Xenomorph said:

Believe it or not, the Garden holds a magnifying glass up to potentials. For those that hate me, and rightfully so, this is nothing more than an opportunity to take your digs at me. For example, you have a Delphinus "like" on your post. Next to Cooper, I can't think of a person who hates me worse. For as intelligent as he is, he's only fooling himself that the man behind the curtain isn't a clever and seasoned leader. As much as I hate him, even I know he's a good leader to his people, and probably cares a great deal for his faction like I do mine. I just don't stop to say things like that. Neither do most of you.

Everything I've heard of you, at least from the Mhaldorian side of things, seems absolutely great. The few posts I've read, and the atmosphere you've brought to the city, have proven me wrong in judging your ability to lead Mhaldor.

Let me lay it out: I don't hate you. I utterly distrust your biases, and not as "Mhaldor's leader" but as "an Achaean leader." It's because of lines like this:

Xenomorph said:

I'll be crystal clear in saying this: If you aren't Mhaldorian, I don't like you. In fact, I probably hate many to most of you depending on history and circumstances. You know me, Xenomorph, at a far glance, from whatever cancer ward you haunt. Only a Mhaldorian, one that has stood by me and worked with me close is going to know the real guy, or makes any impact on any emotional level. The ones that do, know someone that puts loyalty and brotherhood far above his own personal goals.

Many have moved, or at least try to move, beyond that partisan weirdness. This is probably because we're just different kinds of people; there's a level of sympathy that, let's be honest, is skewed in different directions. I accept that. Even so, there's objective merit. Example: I want New Shallam to be a damned compelling entity. I want to see it rise up and be great, because if it does, that's just one more layer of depth in a game I spend time playing. I want them to pick a place that makes sense. To that end, if chopping some trees means Shallam can bring its A-game from there on out, I am utterly willing to take a scripted loss. In the same vein, most of us want to see cities like Hashan and M-town shine.

Bottom line: You see Mhaldor as "your guys," but I see Achaea as "my guys." I think that's mostly where we differ. I could be wrong, and to be honest, I hope I am.

We are all unique creatures. I am extremely unique, and unlike any other thats been appointed so far. Am I an asshole? Yes. Am I hateful of others? Yes. Am I a troll? Oh god yes. Can the old man trust me to get the job done? Of course.

My biases while loud, are much quieter than they used to be. I'll be the first to agree with you on my biases, but at least it makes things interesting. Rough around the edges, not afraid to get in trouble, but fiercely loyal to his faction at all costs.

I don't wish ill will on non Mhaldorians, I mean, from an OOC standpoint I don't really hate you heh, I'm just IC adamant about doing my job. Aside from hate speech pointed at the other cities, I'm so engaged in working with and tending to my own faction, I won't really offer up advice concerning Ashtan, Hashan, etc. That's not for me to do. That's for those players to dictate and decide for their own good. Being loyal to all achaeans would perhaps be a better fit, but I find this a lot more interesting.

But more should take note of what I'm saying there. I'm not offering up my two cents on alien orgs and cities because I'm not a part of them. It's just like foreigners commenting on Mhaldor or its Fascist regime. They have no frame of reference, thusly their comment falls on its face like the village drunk.

Jules

I really would like to see all of the cities continue to become more and more separate, while maintaining consideration of the players behind the characters.  Not that there shouldn't ever be instance of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", but I'd love to see even more of that go away.  Every city benefits from this, even Cyrene, perhaps even more so as the neutral-good city, since we hopefully won't be so chummy with Good ever again.  Mhaldor drawing a line in the sand with us sometime back was a step in the right direction (as much as Jules hankers for a lycopod salad).  I hope that all of the leaders (who are largely more mature? versions of the same people from several years ago), and the Garden itself, will continue to cooperate to make that happen.  

Xenomorph

Horatio said:

Xenomorph said:

Iocun said:

I'm really not quite sure why Xenomorph was picked as city leader. I mean, he makes you lol enough and I guess he's somewhat "badass", but he's just not quite the material for city leader of an RP-heavy city. Having good rapiers and cursing a lot just isn't all it takes.

 -I served as GM of the Infernals Guild in Ashtan back around, oh, 2001-2002 I think it was.

-Anyways. Iocun, I really don't know who you are, but I hope you are happy reaching combat levels I achieved years ago. I may not fight much anymore, but once upon a time I burned babies by the bonfire and smashed in enough heads to make 10 ashtrays for every player. I've forgotten more than you know.

-PS: You should all be a lot more thankful of High Lord Vadimuses. He gave you the ability to compete with the old guard rather than watch you fend for yourself.

Bold point #1: Is it really fair to put GM of the Infernals on your curriculum vitae? It was barely a week long. Hwolf contested you within hours of being elected.

Bold point #2: I can't tell if srs or if forum arpee.  At any rate, you weren't some amazing combatant years ago so stop acting all hard. When it came to the Infernals, you weren't even in the top 5. Add in the rest of Ashtan at that time, and "Xenomorph" and "smashing in heads" were never in the same sentence. 

Bold point #3: C'mon now. You say this as if the "old guard" did everything manually, as if Zmud systems didn't make their rounds back in the day. I'm sure Tranquility didn't use any macros, he typed out all of his monk combos, right? Shakti had no aliases, Estach had no triggers, Dresden used telnet. None of them ever shared information or helped one another out to understand healing and all that. I call bullshit. They walked both ways, uphill, in the snow to the arena with no automapper! I'm sure that Vadi's helped put combat in the hands of so many people who couldn't be assed to do it otherwise, but let's not pretend that all the "old guard" greats did it all on their own.

Horatio Hornblower. Still a hater I see, how long have you been harboring all this now? Truth be told, I remember you as an Infernal washout, but I'm surprised you are still around. I figured you would have gone the way of David Carradine a few years back.

Trey

Wearing a Batman suit and asphyxiating himself while rubbing one out? o.O

Ruth

Xenomorph said:

All of a sudden, I'm contracted for the position, and almost immediately many "have a problem" with the choice made by the Garden. Which is pretty sad, because does that mean?:

Every leader has their love and hate faction. I have my fair share, but the important thing is that if you feel you're managing things the right way, you'll eventually engender yourself to the people who dislike you before long, and especially if things turn out pretty good after all that effort. (I only have a personal example, unfortunately. Ask around and I think you'll hear a lot about the past Kelandra/Ruth animosity revolving around EF. We're cool with each other now, btw, and EF is doing awesome with/without my guidance.) That said, I think the greatest credit for you as Tyrannus is the number of Mhaldorians who stuck around every day for the Bal'met event and how well they defended the city under your watch.

Xenomorph said:

Anyone in Mhaldor is welcome to take part in how the city is run, but remember loyalty is where it starts. "Play ball", wow, you can achieve anything, huh? Be underhanded, unsupportive, or untrustworthy. Well, let me take a moment to say, it won't turn out well for you. This is a dictatorship. The city IS on lockdown and siezing control by underhanded means is out of the question. Play ball, be a team player, the sky is the limit.

At the moment, it doesn't feel like a dictatorship. We talk about Mhaldor being a dictatorship, but we're not putting in actions to get there. Every step we take brings us backwards instead of forward. There's too much talk of laws, too much dissention against what higher ranked people can or can't do. And for the record, I don't mind the practice of nepotism in Mhaldor, unless it is negatively impacting the city's progress.

Any other comments I might have about Xeno in person doesn't fit here though. I'll keep that IG.

Horatio

Not hating, just making sure you're not blowing too much smoke up everybody's asses. I don't harbor any ill feelings, but if you're going to talk yourself up, it helps when there's nobody else around who was there and knows otherwise. 

Xenomorph

Iocun said:

@Xenomorph: I neither dislike you, nor your character, personally. And Xenomorph might indeed be a great and loyal guy in your house and city. I have no way of judging that. All I can see from my outside perspective is the image Xenomorph presents to the outside world, and here, he's simply more known for being quick with an obscene insult and for a "kill first, ask later"-attitude than for all the redeeming qualities he may have. Many remember him more as a "thug" than as a calm and calculating strategist, which doesn't help Mhaldor to be perceived as quite the deep-RP city it could be. This doesn't mean your character doesn't have a place in Mhaldor or Achaea, I just question his place as its figurehead.

Oh, and the comment about "good rapiers" wasn't meant as a jibe at your combat abilities. "His rapiers hurt and he curses" are just two of the things that come to my mind first when I think "Xenomorph".

That's the thing. I rarely if ever even speak publically outside of Mhaldor, it's been that way for a few real life years now. You have the old man (Sartan) who wants results, He chooses very carefully how things are run, what direction it needs to go, etc.

Honestly, your making comments on someone you don't even know or a faction you aren't even part of. That's like me showing up to your work and slapping the d*cks out of your mouth, its just out of line.

Xenomorph

Horatio said:

Not hating, just making sure you're not blowing too much smoke up everybody's asses. I don't harbor any ill feelings, but if you're going to talk yourself up, it helps when there's nobody else around who was there and knows otherwise. 

You are a hater, and you hold grudges badly. I know you were a washout, but I don't ever know what became of you.

I'm not tooting my own horn, horatio hornblower. My post was to make sense of why I'm here in the crane operator seat. You can piss and moan all you want, but the proof is in the pudding. I've stuck with my faction since day 1. My reign was short as Infernal GM but not the eye blink you make out. And for being IC 27y/o or so, that's pretty cool. The Guild did not last very long after me and Hwolf ran it, too many enemies, too many people turning on Sartan.

Anyways, like I said, I'm just providing a reason -why.- The substantiated reasons were to give merit to my claim, that I've been around the block, that I know a thing or two about Knights, and like a champion horsebreeder, its what I do. My favorite hobby on here is giving interviews and training Maldaathi youth.

Your negative post is just a dig at me. If you have a real problem with me, do something about it. You wont, your all hot air and crap attitude.

Iocun

It's not as if I went into an all-out tirade on how terrible a Tyrannus you are. I made a short statement of scepticism on a public political figure (!) of Achaea, based on my (admittedly limited) personal knowledge and opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

Nellaundra

Now I wanna see Iocun go on a full all-out tirade about how terrible every leader is.

Tanaar

Can't we all just get along, or at least submit the issue for review at the next bi-weekly subcommittee meeting? Pretty sure that's how things work these days, or so my alt in Mhaldor tells me

Horatio

Xenomorph said:

Horatio said:

Not hating, just making sure you're not blowing too much smoke up everybody's asses. I don't harbor any ill feelings, but if you're going to talk yourself up, it helps when there's nobody else around who was there and knows otherwise. 

You are a hater, and you hold grudges badly. I know you were a washout, but I don't ever know what became of you.

I'm not tooting my own horn, horatio hornblower. My post was to make sense of why I'm here in the crane operator seat. You can piss and moan all you want, but the proof is in the pudding. I've stuck with my faction since day 1. My reign was short as Infernal GM but not the eye blink you make out. And for being IC 27y/o or so, that's pretty cool. The Guild did not last very long after me and Hwolf ran it, too many enemies, too many people turning on Sartan.

Anyways, like I said, I'm just providing a reason -why.- The substantiated reasons were to give merit to my claim, that I've been around the block, that I know a thing or two about Knights, and like a champion horsebreeder, its what I do. My favorite hobby on here is giving interviews and training Maldaathi youth.

Your negative post is just a dig at me. If you have a real problem with me, do something about it. You wont, your all hot air and crap attitude.

What grudge? We've never wronged each other in game or out, so I really don't know what possible grudge there could be. You greatly exaggerated some points, I just took a little air out of them.

But I will give you this: You mention your favorite hobby as working with Maldaathi youth. You were HoN when I joined the Infernals and I had a good time coming up as a novice under you. I modeled myself after you when I eventually become the HoN. Still think I'm a hater? 

Xenomorph

Hater.

Go eff yourself.

 

Meletus, its not me man! these guys force it out of me.

Tvistor

I'm going to post a wall of text about what I've seen in Mhaldor.

@Nellaundra I dunno, it's probably okay if they're her kittens.


As far as Mhaldor's theme goes:

Mhaldor is just so messed up thematically at times. My proteges are ruthless, sophisticated to some extent, but ultimately thugs.

Mhaldorian culture as a whole varies so much. On some days everyone is like 'Haha, blood, self mutilation' and on other days we're saying 'Well, there's more to Evil than violence'.

And even then, some people just stick to one extreme. I don't particularly mind the former approach as long as it's done consistently (even though it really doesn't leave you much to talk about theologically), but the image of Mhaldorians sipping tea in the guardhouse filled with dozens of skeletons doesn't sit right with me. I like to think I'm at a decent blend between utilizing violence and tact (no doubt people will disagree). One of my favorite Mhaldorians of all time is Tirac, purely because he has always been patient and good natured OOCly. That alone is enough to make any character a huge boon to whatever organization they are in. On top of that though, he's eloquent when he needs to be while avoiding being needlessly verbose. He's also amazing to watch in fights in that he's extremely efficient.

And then we have stores that sell mhun steaks. I've always felt eating other sentient beings (and some of the other gross stuff in there) is needlessly contrived generic evil. I guess it's related to Suffering or something? All I know is that when someone offers me a mhun steak and cracks jokes about fried atavian wings, I have the sudden urge to 'DESCRIBE SELF He is sporting a spectacular mustache' so that I can twirl it. I would hope people would know we're evil without having to kick the dog.


As far as numbers go:

Mhaldor is pretty organized in raids. We have the occasional person who has attained a high CR without learning basic raid mechanics via RP'd sermons. I normally wouldn't care, but since a lot of the PK crowd left, the burden of being able to use telepathy/apostasy/whatever properly has fallen squarely onto their shoulders. Fortunately the Naga have a somewhat decent amount of people IG again, and approximately half of them are competent in raids. The rest have seen enough raiding that they don't actively mess up, which is good enough for me.

I'd like more apostates and monks. And Occultists. Just two. Or one. Can I have one Occultist?


And then the massive drama over leadership:

I don't even know where to begin. I went dormant to focus on my studies after leaving HL. I logged in and one day someone hits me up on Skype, asking me to run for Tyrannus. I was like 'What?' because:

a) Regardless of whether I was suitable or not, people whined so much about getting HL that I just have better things to do.

b) Why on earth would I be Tyrannus? I haven't even played in two months.

It rapidly became clear that is was more or less just an excuse to complain about Xenomorph. After a bunch of attacks on his character (calling him homophobic, so on, so forth) I rejoined one of the larger Mhaldorian Skype groups just to see what was up. I got permabanned within ten minutes for not saying 'Oh god Xenomorph, that bastard, I hate him'. I was basically accused of shameless trolling because I refused to hate him without firsthand experience.

So I started totally unbiased and was initially 100% for Xenomorph, since during previous interactions he had been perfectly polite and willing to listen. Keep in mind I didn't know him well and hadn't been exposed to the OOC groups in ages. I was jumping back into the game more or less totally blind.

It started off on a bad foot because of some proposed treaties with Ashtan. They were supposedly being done before Xenomorph took power (I wasn't around) but only objected to when he brought them up.

Alliance with Ashtan made no sense to me, but when I pointed out sailing with Ashtani made no sense either, I was told to pretty much shut up because 'It was fun' and 'Who cares?'. Because of that, certain people complaining too much about the whole Ashtani dealie strikes me as profoundly hypocritical.

I think the main difference was that the previous Tyrannus wanted a ceasefire, whereas this treaty allowed for us raiding together. It was fairly close to being finalized before Bal'met turned up.

Everything was pretty okay, the needless hate died off a bit. I'd like to mention names at this point for the sake of total honesty, but I'd probably get in troubles with moderators. Suffice it to say some Mhaldorians that were viewed fairly questionably were given cityfavours, rank and in some cases, credits.

I didn't understand a few of these decisions at all, but can respect that my opinion of the individuals in question might have been inaccurate. The one case where I thought the problem was extremely severe, Xenomorph corrected it within 24 hours, despite the fact it strained an OOC friendship of his. For the most part, I've been left to do my own thing in the Naga, so I really don't have any complaints. At the moment, Mhaldor's just watching like a hawk for any signs of nepotism. There have been some things that might have been nepotism, but I can't rightly say.

There was a big focus on having a government of people who would just say "Yes." to all the Tyrannus' orders. A great idea in theory, but it just doesn't work out too well when you're under this much scrutiny. There are people Mhaldor would likely give the benefit of the doubt, and they could likely create a government of "Yes-men" as it was put while keeping the more respected Mhaldorians on board. 

I really don't have anything to add past this point. More than any actual suitability, it would be good if we had a Tyrannus the city trusted enough to not be constantly doubting. I don't know if Xenomorph can overcome the initial reception he had, or the perceived motivations behind some of his decisions, but until something changes nothing truly awesome is going to happen in Mhaldor.

Anyway, the lesson here is OOC politics are dumb. If one more person accuses me of secretly operating everything I do OOCly, or being biased against someone unfairly just because it lets them whine some more, I swear I am going to do away with patience and just grief them horrendously.

Jules

Wow, I never thought I'd see a Tvistor tirade.  @Nellaundra, this gives me hope for an Iocun tirade, someday. 

Jacen

That was one of the best posts I've read on here. Honesty, objective evaluation, unbiased observation. And there wasn't even a quip or joke in there, just a single link to a trope. Nice post, @Tvistor, +100forumrep

Xenomorph

I try not to post a lot on Achaea forums, to address the overall issue and the purpose of the thread, I'll try to offer my own helpful conclusion.

 

Remember, some of you have played for a long time. Sometimes you lose focus on what initially brought you to this faction so long ago. Everyone needs to take a step back, keep things in perspective. I try to view things as simply as possible. Lord Sartan is back, Mhaldor serves Him while following the Seven Truths. There are four Guilds in Mhaldor, as a player in the faction, you are legally attached to one of these. You'll find that you have duties in both city, and Guild. There is always something to do, always. Remember what brought you here, help a young one get the ropes, and offer a hand when you can. Citizens that wish to be government leaders can be groomed in such a way. People that want to focus on fighting can also be groomed to be the latest generation of modern combatants. While remembering you live in Mhaldor and to show respect, approach your leaders, engage them in discussion and let your goals be known. If you feel any leader is not adequately helping you, I have an open door policy. I'm not here for the Garden buffet. I'm here because I'm your conduit to Lord Sartan, and somebody that seeks to take care of you, and help you reach your goals.

While I greatly encourage IC discussion, if at all you need support and need to go OOC, drop me a message, I don't bite. Remember, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, so ask questions. Especially to yourself: what do you want in life from the Mhaldorian faction? Keep things within reason, remembering you have many peers that have goals as well, I encourage you to let yourself be heard, and approach things in an appropriate fashion. Remember, despite all the appointed leaders you see running around, Mhaldor is dictated by its player base as a whole, its a collective community of friends that operate on the extreme far right of the political spectrum

The best piece of advice I can give is this: Always, -always- be thankful that Lord Sartan has returned, I can't tell you enough how good that move is for business in the Mhaldorian faction. Many of you feel that the Garden is already back to its old tricks, a god is here, but the god is not with us, and is rarely here. Believe me when I say: this is being handled. Tecton, the Garden, even those admin shrubby punisher buzzkill guys know that the people want and deserve an active divine moreso than anything else. Have faith that this -will- happen. Wouldn't you rather wait a little bit, and know that they trained up their very best shit hot candidate for the role? I know I would rather wait for that, than to be served some fast foot knockoff divine that counts his progress by how many messages he could delete that day.

It's being handled, and we have good times to look forward to. Leaders, as I say probably every other day, I highly encourage your discussion and involvement. Have cool ideas, have personal goals or want to take your orgs in certain directions? Get with me, I'll help you the absolute best I can. While I'm no god, I'm the main conduit to the one we have, and anything I can't get done myself will be passed up to the old man, post haste. As far as the "yes-men" discussion goes, its more an idea that we need people we can count on. It's a militaristic society, or at least thats how I view it. That's how I peddle and push it. As your current primary leader, I won't ask you to do anything that I myself would not do, nor will you receive orders or directives that the boss wouldnt bless off on Himself. That's not the way I do business, you are being governed largely in a way that the Maldaathi have for hundreds of years. Simple effective, chain of command based leadership principles through a clearly established hierarchy of mortal helpers, or "leaders."

The sooner that all leaders of the faction treat their jobs with the people in mind, taking care of others first, the city begins to repair itself. A positive vibe is felt, people are happy, and quite frankly shit gets done. I'm not going to be here forever, but I want to make my time here as positive as possible, and invite a concerted, cerebral, and devoted cadre to help get us where we need to be. After this, I'm done. Retired, I'm going to train novices full time. Maybe Arador has room for me in his staff to help.

Anyways, the Mhaldorian faction, and Achaea really, is what you make of it. You can choose to be positive, and contribute to help the group, or, you can not. Nobody can decide that for you. Just know, you have good people with good intentions trying to make the city a better place. I can only lead so far, for the rest I need the cities help. We are all in this together. At worst, we'll simmer and maintain, at best, we'll flourish and take the city in, well, whichever direction that you would like to, so long as the old man blesses off on it, and we are doing our jobs.

Anyways, thats all for me. Good luck.

edit: Also, remember to give only food or blankets to the Refugees. By giving them money, you are doing nothing but enabling drug addiction among the homeless.

Ruth

I'm contented so far with the effort the Garden has dealt with the role of Sartan. I see effort, at least.

Antidas

After reading the previous few posts, I feel I should share my own personal experiences with the current leadership of Mhaldor as well. Note that this post will not address all the problems in Mhaldor, but merely the problems with the current leadership. I will also point out now that I am very biased when it comes to this topic, for reasons I hope you will understand shortly. I apologize now if this turns into a wall of text, I'm not entirely sure how its gonna end up.

I will start by saying that my personal view of Xenomorph, before he became Tyrannus, was not a bad one. I felt that he was far from a star role-player, but he obviously wasn't stupid and could fight reasonably well, and despite having a few views on forums that I thought were quite archaic, was a decent guy overall. When the word spread that Kaevan was stepping down from Tyrannus, there were two potential candidates for Tyrannus. If you don't already know who I am referring to, well, then don't worry about it, as its not that important. Suffice to say they were both well established characters and I would have been perfectly happy with either of them taking over. However, part way through the process, word leaked out all of a sudden that Xenomorph had thrown his name into the pot as well. I admit that I was not too thrilled about this. Not because I didn't like him, as stated above, but mostly just because I had never seen him as a paragon of RP, and I personally feel whoever the Tyrannus of Mhaldor is, needs to be one. Time went on and the Garden decided Xenomorph would be the best person for the job. There were many theories that spread at this point as to why Xenomorph was picked over the other two, and whether or not they were true, I still don't believe either of them were very fair to him, or to Tecton. I talked about it with a few people, and mostly thanks to Tvistor, decided to do my best to put aside any preconceptions I had and simply wait to see how he did. I suppose I should also mention that near the end of Kaevan's time as Tyrannus, he appointed me as Minister of Security, and so I was when Xenomorph took over. Anyways…

The first problem I had was the jump to form a new treaty with Ashtan. To my knowledge, the treaty Kaevan had been arranging before had simply been a basic non-aggression thing. That is, you don't raid us, we don't raid you, etc etc. This was under the IC justification (for both sides, I believe) of turning our attentions to the larger threat of the East. I started to take issue with it when Xenomorph took over and basically began trying to remake mashtan. When asked about it, he claimed it was Shaitan's will. Unfortunately, as we still had no gods, it was impossible to confirm or deny this, or do anything about it even if it wasn't true. This of course implies that at the time, the Garden wanted Mhaldor and Ashtan to become allies again, which I find even more unlikely now that I know how soon after this the Bal'met event began. I do admit that it was at this point that my attempt to remain unbiased towards his leadership began to slip, as I was strongly against becoming allies with Ashtan again.

In the past, Mhaldor has done quite well by being very elitist concerning the people who were allowed citizenship. The recent trend, however, which I believe started with Xenomorph, is seemingly the opposite of this. We began letting in people who, at least in my opinion, had no business being Mhaldorian. People who were argumentative, problematic, and worst of all, had really no semblance of RP. Lets be honest here, you all know the kind of person I'm talking about; they exist all over the place, unfortunately. That kind of play style, while barely tolerated in some other cities, will never have a place in Mhaldor. The reasoning for this was, once again, that Shaitan demanded we increase our population. Seeing a pattern yet? In any case, I let this go on for a time, but I eventually hit a snag when he tried to induct someone I had had personal experience with. The person in question had been a Naga previously, and had really been quite useless. Before she eventually left, she did nothing but bring drama to the house. Shortly after quitting she joined Eleusis, but she did not last long there. The quickly quit Eleusis, joined Ashtan, quit Ashtan, attempted to join Hashan, was turned down, and was now back applying for citizenship to Mhaldor again. When i saw her in Mhaldor I asked Xenomorph what she was doing here, and I was told that she was rejoining, and I was to do my best to expedite the process so that she could join sooner rather than later. My immediate response was, why would we even consider letting said person back in Mhaldor? I continued to outline the exact reasons why I thought this was absurd. I admit, the proper Mhaldorian response should have been "Yes, Tyrannus." However, I just assumed that Xeno couldn't possibly know the background and history of this person, because if he did, there's no way he'd want her back in Mhaldor, right? No. Instead of reacting rationally, he, for lack of a better word, simply exploded. He began cussing me out, calling me all sorts of things that I will not repeat on the forums, told me, in much harsher terms, that I was the weak link in the government, etc etc. My reaction was to tell him that if he couldn't trust my opinion enough to even listen to it without raging, then I should step down from my Ministry position. He told me that was fine, but that I would continue with my duty until he could find a suitable replacement. My response to this was quite simply "no," before I QQ'd. This of course ended with a CDF about how I can't follow orders, and being removed from the council. Granted, I probably could have handled the situation better, but it doesn't change the fact that a city leader should be able to compose themselves -far- better than this.

Another problem that I have found with Xenomorph is actually one of his own admission: that of his great bias towards the Maldaathi. During the conversation I had with him mentioned in the above paragraph, he brought up the topic of having a government of "yes men," something that I will touch on more later. I said that this is all well and good, but you still need people who's opinions you can trust to help you lead well, to which he agreed. When I asked him who these people were, his response was "the Maldaathi Knights." Ok, fine. So your character has a strong bias towards his own housemates. This was all well and good when his only position was HL of the Maldaathi, and Viceroy in Mhaldor. However, when you take over as Tyrannus, its really not acceptable to have such strong favor of one house over the others. It leads to low moral in the other three houses when you won't trust anyone but members of this specific house, and make a point of telling everyone how they should be more like the Maldaathi. Xenomorph, you may well have been a truly excellent High Lord, but there are a lot of differences between leading a house, and leading a city.

My final point is that of the "yes men" that I mentioned above. While this is a fine opinion to have ICly, you have to make some sacrifices to it on an OOC level. Mhaldor is a dictatorship, sure, but its also a dictatorship in a game. Having a government full of mini-Xenomorph's isn't going to be fun for anyone, no matter how much sense it may make from an IC standpoint. I think the only result that can come from this kind of thinking is the alienation of all the people in Mhaldor who are capable of taking any initiative themselves. For the record, these are the people that we need -more- of, not less.

Hayte

I wasn't privy to much(or pretty much any) of what you talked about @antidas so I have no comment there...but surely you can see the hilarity in the statement, "In the past, Mhaldor has done quite well by being very elitist concerning the people who were allowed citizenship." Every time I log on I end up going "Who the ---- let that sorry------ piece of ---- excuse for a ----sucking middle-aged ----- in here?" for a whole new person.

Edit: And it's been this way for oh...ever

Antidas

@Hayte Mhaldor has certainly let in some questionable people at times, but there was a huge burst of it after Xeno took over. Luckily most of these applications were shut down, whether by myself or another member of the Mhaldorian gov't.

Hayte

Carmell. CARMELL

Antidas

doesn't change the fact that there have been far more of that sort of thing recently

Hayte

I'll take your word for the applications turned down. But when the number of -total- new people reaches half the number of people that made me make "who the ----" comments that got in during Kaevan's last reign, I'll start to take notice.

This is not a critique of Kaevan or the "who the ----" people he let in. I don't name names and I don't make scenes at the time because I am quite aware that I am a douche and will be frequently wrong.

Ok, I'm tired and am unable to word things very politely so I apologize. This - "In the past, Mhaldor has done quite well by being very elitist concerning the people who were allowed citizenship." statement is completely wrong. From there, any attempts to marginalize, hedge, or whatever, just make me disregard your point, and I'm trying not to. I've found that many times when I had the thoughts that you had there in that paragraph that it all came down to the fact that I did not like the people being inducted, which turned out quite correct in many cases and incorrect in others.

I did the job, for a gross amount of time and people. I'm not going to shame myself with some of the people who were let in during my tenure, but it was during Dethea's run amd trust me, unless you turned down Cooper's application letter, you are wrong.

Antidas

I disagree with most of what you said. However, I dont see the point of arguing it here. I'd be glad to continue this in private, or to send you a few of the names and let you judge for yourself whether you wanted those people in Mhaldor. I guarantee, it wasn't just because I disliked them.