Lore questions.

Maghak

The Pools said:

Damariel says, "Let's clear up the 'do Grook lay eggs' debate once and for all."
Valdus says, "Grooks lay eggs?"
Valdus says, "Has science gone too far?!"
Valdus says, "Learn to lay eggs with this one weird tip."

Hello again! This thread is for a fairly general purpose; if there is a point of canon that you want to be clarified, or if there is lore in the game that you cannot find in detail and want to ask about, here is the place to ask! The Gods in general (and myself and Damariel in particular) will be keeping an eye on this topic to ensure a speedy response.

Please keep it civil and avoid arguments (although you can feel free to correct someone on a point if you believe you have a better source or more information!), and be aware that we won't be posting spoilers on upcoming lore or things that are deliberately unclear at the moment.

Rivas

WHAT IN THE EVERLOVING UNICORNS IS THE HOWLING???

Veovis

Rivas said:

WHAT IN THE EVERLOVING UNICORNS IS THE HOWLING???

It probably has something to do with the Grand Artifice. 

Omei

Truthfully - we don't honestly know. It's just an (necessary) OOC mechanism.

Alexina

So. What about the 'quit' message? I was having a philosophical discussion about vampires' souls, or lack thereof, with someone some time ago, and they told me vampires obviously have souls since they pray to have them preserved (I think the actual quit message also states this) when departing the lands.

Basically... is this even relevant to lore/IC at all? Could the quit messages be changed to something like 'Joebob begins preparing to depart the realms./Joebob has departed the realms.' or something more neutral like that?

Moirean

Everyone has "souls" in some form, since deathlore lets you steal them, though Carnis kinda treat that concept a bit loosely, and see them more as a type of essence (mostly sidestepping all the weird/philosophical questions the concept of "souls" bring up).

Omei

It's not really complicated at all! The undead never lose their souls. Rather, undead beings are an amalgam of earth and shadow essences. I'm not 100% on the details on this (@Maghak and @Razmael explained it to me) but there's an entire coherent system for how Dhar, undead people, and souls can all coexist.

Slyphe

If a hemlock bush dies in the Morgun but nobody is around to hear it, did it actually make a sound?

Moirean

@omei - if you read the deathlore messages, there's all this stuff about the underhalls and the souls coming from there, which is why it gets weird, since deathlore skills work fine on the undead.

Maghak

*clears throat*

There are four major distinctions between types of creature. Broadly:

• The living - amalgamations of mixed elemental essences (with no particular element dominating) with a preponderance of Spirit. Living things passively maintain their bodies via various metabolic processes and ambient energy ('naturally' for want of a less loaded term).
  
• The undead - as the living, but with a large amount of Shadow serving the role of Spirit; their flesh is maintained via something like the Ritual of Union or the direct manipulation of blood rather than the passive processes of the living. Undeath can be thought of as a state of lethal imbalance between Shadow and Spirit kept in equilibrium by an outside force.
  
• The elemental - creatures like the eld, formed from pure or relatively pure elemental essences with very little Spirit or Shadow present. They can be intelligent, but have very little in the way of souls and an argument could be easily made that they are not 'alive' in a traditional sense.
  
• The demonic - creatures from another plane or spectrum of existence that do not fall into the elemental category. Chaos demons fall under this heading, as do various non-elemental denizens of the planes. Amusingly creatures like angels are technically demonic; you can probably substitute 'alien' if you don't mind the sci-fi overtones the term adds.
  

As for souls, well. Souls are a kind of echo left by a sufficiently complex form. Anything that contains enough complex interactions between forms of essence or power has a soul echo, usually in the form of life essence with relative amounts of bonded Spirit or Shadow modicums. For this reason even animals will have a soul, but more complex thinking creatures have a 'larger' or 'more powerful' 

soul. This is also why regions like Dendara or various forests can attain a measure of intelligence and 'life'; there is a tendency in Aetolian cosmology for sufficiently large and complex structures, or smaller things with a lot of power moved through them (like swords), to take on intelligence of a sort!

The quit message itself is frankly an OOC relic. It has little to no relevance to lore.

Rivas said:

WHAT IN THE EVERLOVING UNICORNS IS THE HOWLING???

To quote from the only source we have on hand: 

"Sheine was the daughter of a Druid and an Occultist but cursed: he was born in wolf form. Having a rational, sentient brain but no way to communicate, Sheine was plagued by torment. When her forestal home was burned by wildfire, she had no way to express her pain other than to howl. Her howl still rings across the land, echoing in each mortal's ears once a month."

Moirean

Just to make sure we're on the right page, this is what we have in our OOC RP notes project, based on what we've been able to observe via skill messages and stuff IG. If any of this is wrong or could be improved, would love to know so I can update it.

SOULS:

- Consumption opens a link, somehow, to the Underhalls from which the souls are summoned for us to gather

- Only souls of the sentient can be controlled by the Carnifex....for now.

- The "souls" we control are not just those tied to the Underhalls and controlled by Dhar, but something more esoteric, referred to as souls as a catch-all term. The actual soul is something more nebulous, though, and directly tied to identity/consciousness and life essence of the owner

  ----> Vampires and undead can have their souls stolen, despite not being tied to the Underhalls.

  ----> The "soul" we control is some deep, visceral element of being, the thing that connects mind and body together

Veovis

Does Blood Generation (e.g. distance from the Primus) still have any practical effect? I know it used to, but I've heard conflicting stories on whether it effects anything but your Dominion/Imperium title at this point. 

Sessizlik

What's up with Grecht laying eggs? They are bat-people, but they make clay nests and lay eggs like.. swallows? I really really need to know, cause it's confused me to no end since I saw the nests and I have yet to find a way to find out icly.

Ezalor

@Veovis it's just an honourary title at this point.

Iosyne

Sessizlik said:

What's up with Grecht laying eggs? They are bat-people, but they make clay nests and lay eggs like.. swallows? I really really need to know, cause it's confused me to no end since I saw the nests and I have yet to find a way to find out icly.

@Sessizlik: Grecht are considered monotremes, or egg-laying mammals such as the platypus. They are not like bats, who have litters. I would also consider the evidence of a stable Grecht population with nests as sufficient IC information.

Iosyne

Veovis said:

Does Blood Generation (e.g. distance from the Primus) still have any practical effect? I know it used to, but I've heard conflicting stories on whether it effects anything but your Dominion/Imperium title at this point. 

@Veovis: This was disabled some time ago. We're not certain yet if we're going to bring this back in any form, as there were a lot of problems with how much of an impact it had before.

Daskalos

Moirean said:

Just to make sure we're on the right page, this is what we have in our OOC RP notes project, based on what we've been able to observe via skill messages and stuff IG. If any of this is wrong or could be improved, would love to know so I can update it.

SOULS:

- Consumption opens a link, somehow, to the Underhalls from which the souls are summoned for us to gather

- Only souls of the sentient can be controlled by the Carnifex....for now.

- The "souls" we control are not just those tied to the Underhalls and controlled by Dhar, but something more esoteric, referred to as souls as a catch-all term. The actual soul is something more nebulous, though, and directly tied to identity/consciousness and life essence of the owner

  ----> Vampires and undead can have their souls stolen, despite not being tied to the Underhalls.

  ----> The "soul" we control is some deep, visceral element of being, the thing that connects mind and body together

Of note, Dhar has stated all souls belong to him and each should be judged by him. The fact that the undead bypass his halls is what makes them so offensive to him. 

Xavin

Iosyne said:

Veovis said:

Does Blood Generation (e.g. distance from the Primus) still have any practical effect? I know it used to, but I've heard conflicting stories on whether it effects anything but your Dominion/Imperium title at this point. 

@Veovis: This was disabled some time ago. We're not certain yet if we're going to bring this back in any form, as there were a lot of problems with how much of an impact it had before.

Please don't, or if you do have it be something that is as non-mechanical as possible. I've heard stories of people being able to effectively bash on only corpus mending and that makes me


Question: What makes the shadow and spirit planes habitable by mortals where the four 'traditional' planes are not?


edit: Question 2: Regarding progressive enchantments: What were the Naldereth trying to do with them? Did they have a specific purpose for each one? Is the purpose of the few that remain known? (Granted, I only know of one that still exists)

Arbre

Haha, I used to bash Moghedu at level 25ish with mend only.  This was back before reanimation.  It was glorious.

Sarita

I'm going to agree with hoping it doesn't happen. I know some really awesome people with lower bloodranks now, and I'd hate to see them lose opportunities to get to embrace people just because they know they'll have a harder time bashing/fighting/whatever if they don't have a high rank.

Daskalos

If the Underking has dominion over the undead, why do we see Varian at the mirror? Shouldn't, thematically, we go to Dhar? Especially since Varian is turning more and more into a mythological creature no one ever sees.

Haern

Daskalos said:

Of note, Dhar has stated all souls belong to him and each should be judged by him.

So cute. So trusting.

Daskalos

The irony of it all is that Daskalos doesn't actually believe in the gods as being superior beings, save Dhar because his is the dominion of Death. He actually is almost agnostic in that he believes the gods are just a 'step above' and given how many mortal shells have imbued themselves with divine essence, he quietly searches for ways to do that to himself. He followed Auresae for this reason, and Damariel. If Maghak had been on the light side, he probably would of ended up there versus Dhar.

Haven

@Daskalos: Yeah, I don't consider everything the gods say ICly as absolute law or true (though my characters may believe such) unless they're stepping outside of their role into an administrative one. They're characters just like us who can lie and mislead or whatever. Only they're infinitely more powerful than we are (or so we're lead to believe.).

So while yes, Dhar may say "All your base are belong to me." does not mean it is true.

Haven

Speaking of Varian, will he ever have more of a role in the game than is currently present?

Oleis

Haven said:

Speaking of Varian, will he ever have more of a role in the game than is currently present?

Probably not. He was a producer god before we realized those were better off not having important game roles. If my Aetolian history is correct, the last Varian is the president of the company. He's a busy dude.

Aarbrok

I know a while back Achaea (Sorry for making the reference) changes their halls from death from being that of Maya (A Producer Role) to that of Thoth (god of Death/Endbringer)

Is there a way perhaps we could do a similar thing with ours to keep it more lore based, Perhaps maybe Dhar for Living, and Ivoln for Undeath/Vampire.  I think that would give us a bit more accuracy in the scheme of things.

Also, on another note.

I have found it difficult to ICly explain instances to novices, for example the Shade of Xaanhal.  In character Aarbrok sees it as entering into a alternate reality connected to ones person, but I cant accurately explain why I can see that and others cannot unless they synchronize to my wavelength.  Is there any clarification on what an instance is.  Is it like a pocket reality, alternate plane?

Iosyne

Daskalos said:

If the Underking has dominion over the undead, why do we see Varian at the mirror? Shouldn't, thematically, we go to Dhar? Especially since Varian is turning more and more into a mythological creature no one ever sees.

It's been discussed that the death sequence becomes adjusted so that the living go before Dhar. There just hasn't been any forward momentum yet on making this into a reality.

Omei

It's definitely on the to-do list, just can't give you an estimate of how long, other than Soon™.

Veovis

Sarita said:

I'm going to agree with hoping it doesn't happen. I know some really awesome people with lower bloodranks now, and I'd hate to see them lose opportunities to get to embrace people just because they know they'll have a harder time bashing/fighting/whatever if they don't have a high rank.

The Bloodborn have the ability to change someone's blood rank pretty much at will, so long as they can find a willing vampire with the desired rank. It also wasn't as much of a problem when re-Embrace was possible. You could move to a higher blood rank. My character did it twice. If they did bring back a mechanical advantage it would have to be much smaller and/or not affect the same things it did. 

[SPOILER]They don't use it very much, because... okay. I can't rage about the Bloodborn anymore, we all know I'm disappointed in how much the Bloodborn kowtow to Houses and the Imperium/Dominion because my character was dumb as a box of rocks and supported its head as his successor. Unicorns. I did it again.[/SPOILER]

Haven

Hrm. So is Varian's role going to be gradually phased out? That kind of sucks.

Is it true that the gods are all pretty much equal in power now? Because I always thought the hierarchy was based on "power-level" for a lack of a better term and not just the order of their creation by Varian.

1. Varian
   
2. Severn and Damariel
   
3. Haern, Dhar, Lleis
   
4. Ivoln, Auresae, Galleus/Maghak, Slyphe
   
5. Iosyne, Omei, Chakrasul, Khepri