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And that was pretty fair. One of the hardest things for some of us is to just stfu when we have an opinion, heh. I'm as bad as anyone about it, I suppose.
First of all, your post to the Dominion calling out House Ve'kahi. Abhorash has said before, and publicaly, not to call out out other Houses of the Dominion - that's a right reserved exclusively for him. This is something that is also reflected near the end of post #8, where he talks about dissent amongst the houses.
(2)
Your post heavily implies that Abhorash was the one to spur on the call for this blood hunt, which is the main thing he took offence at. You brought the matter of the blood hunt to him and he simply told you that he's not going to handle every single blood hunt and that the council has the ability to vote one into effect. Here's the exact message he sent:
mmsg [riluo, callidora, asaraii, erzsebet] It is up to you all, in most cases, to decide if a bloodhunt would be fun. I tend to be the main voice for them as of late, but you as a council have the ability to vote and have one. I'm going to let you all decide if you wish to have it so or not, rather than calling the thing every time.
Again, this is all reflected in dominion post #8, "The Dominion Council may call for blood hunts once a year in My name if there is sufficient cause by their judgment. Participation is never mandatory, but may well be rewarded. The Council may only call a blood hunt by unanimous agreement. Anything less shall not be considered a binding decision."
As for what Abhorash didn't say... He certainly didn't say in his post to not go through with the blood hunt. He instead says to enjoy it but remember that the Council chose to make it happen, not him.
In short, there has been nothing inconsistent about Abhorash's latest posting that I could find through my own investigations. He in particular has beef with Riluo acting out like this because of the Gaes event, and Riluo was publically told off for that for speaking for Abhorash out of place.
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
Abhorash says, "Ve'kahi has proved that even bastards can earn their place."
It seems like one piece of the current problems is how much spillover we've come to expect between IC and OOC. To me, this is a problem -- I understand the importance of admin transparency due to Aetolia's history of stagnancy, but at the same time, oversharing presents its own problem. Many of us have noted a change in "feel" since we've been playing the game for so long, and I think a lot of that comes down to how much we know about what's going on behind the scenes; it takes away that element of mystery and surprise the game used to have for many of us. Imagine how much more astonishing it would have been had Abhorash sired more PCs without any admin tip-off, plus the fallout that could have been avoided if no one had known that particular staffer's intentions.
Personally, I hate spoilers and so try to avoid reading about upcoming stuff (and a lot of OOC conversation), but I do get the sense our current administration has cut down on some of this communication. That said, I think we could go further in preserving the element of surprise without sacrificing the transparency our community has come to value.
"The smell of dusty fur, sweet smoke, waiting and patience, a thing that time cannot kill. The moth that candles won't burn."
Why can't you Sever someones abilities/access to their skills?
I do believe Achaea has a mechanism whereby Necromancers and Devotion users can be cut off from part of their skillset. I could be wrong, but I think their Devotion/Essence stops regenerating and since most of the abilities in those skillsets require it, it's effectively reducing them to 2 out of 3 skills.
Why doesn't this happen to Vampires that get uppity?
Not advocating it, just curious.
Edit: Perhaps it's because Abhorash is an Admin controlled character whereas the people in Achaea who flick the No Skillzor switch are players?
If you go undead, you can't regen Devotion.
Illumination is really the only skill that could potentially be nixed. Everything else is outside the purview of Divine, more or less.
Occasionally, skills go haywire because of events... but nothing super bad-bad.
As for severing skills I honestly could not do that to people it is a tad evil and whilst Riluo is a utter prick I could not do it and feel comfortable afterwards
Abhorash says, "Ve'kahi has proved that even bastards can earn their place."
EDIT: Assuming probably as long as the gelded person doesn't leave the house either. That is IF it even can be used if the person is a rogue or in a different house.
If it works in Achaea, why couldn't it work here?
Again, neither for nor against. I'm enjoying picturing the hypothetical scenario where it's implemented.
@Zsadist you telling me you wouldn't throw a fit if I could come and PK you and then permanently take your chalice off your corpse?
I'm all for negative consequences in the game, but when my cash investment is in jeopardy because I didn't follow someone elses RP (admin or players), then we have a problem.
Since the hypothetical is based on Achaea's mechanic here's roughly how it works. Devotion users are a Factional class. They belong to Targossas (think Enorian). The big boss allows them to be citizens of a second neutral city, but they're not allowed in the Evil necromancy city, nor in the Nature city. You have access to your powers so long as you don't do anything to go against that faction. If you fraternized with necromancers and killed other Devotion users, you're gonna get Excommunicated. Same goes for Necromancy. It belongs to Mhaldor (think Bloodloch) and there's only one other place it's permitted. Again, go against Mhaldor and you're going to lose your ability to regenerate essence. The skills are still there, you just probably have to jump through some hoops to get your access to your Essence/Devotion again. Or quit class I suppose.
If, hypothetically, Abhorash is driving the Vampiric agenda in a certain direction and someone, lets say a Rogue vampire goes far enough off the reservation, why is them having their abilities retricted such a bad thing? It seems to me like Praenomen and Bloodborn are already factional classes. Everyone picks up the class knowing that, or so it appears to me. Is having that sort of potential consequence really so horrible? To me it seems like some pretty cool flavor.
Again, because I realize how 'in favor' of this idea my post seems to be, I want to state this is just a thought exercise for me to understand more about several things. One being the mental attitude of certain things in the Aetolian playerbase.
Ultimately, admins have no real say in how you play the game.... beit as a Rogue or not. Like Draiman said, when you're suddenly forced to play a specific way, it becomes a problem. It doesnt matter if it would add flavor, make sense, or even be cool to see some asshat vampire be reduced to nothing and have his abilities severed because of his actions.... you cant force someone to bend to your rp/agenda.
Its why the admins usually walk on eggshells because they want to push their agendas, but have to make sure they dont seem like they are forcing the player to do something they dont wanna do. Its all a choice.
Now, Im not saying your actions wont have consequences, however, once your a vampire.... youre pretty much a vampire until you finally decide "Hey, I wanna get cured and be a lifer." Make sense?
I also think they stick disclaimers to the help files of certain classes stating that more roleplay is required for them, and that skills can be taken away if they are played in a negative fashion to their theme.
Oh, oh, and we also can put our skills into stasis, so if anything like this ever does happen.. well, I can't imagine us not having the ability to get our skills back.
And as I and others have said, there already are disclaimers on what you're getting into and how you should behave. I think it could happen and not be a bad thing at all. It's a very interesting scenario in any event.
Big things like this have always made the IRE games feel much deeper for me personally. I wonder what other fun mechanisms could be thought up.
Re: the rest of the conversation. Don't know that I think it'd be a good thing for us as players (or the admin, for that matter) to be able to remove someone's skills. It can be argued that some people might deserve it, sometimes, but it's definitely subjective in others. As a player I don't really feel like it's my place to go (for example) Zomg, Jensen, you're a Yeleni, that's antithetical to Vampire RP, and enforce my belief of that on him by stripping him of class skills.* Not only do I not know the RP behind his in-char decisions and such there are, (and he's certainly not obligated to tell me) but even if I -did- know, he's rogue, he's not part of my house, he's not part of the dominion, what right do I have to exert my will in this way? Even if there's a way (through the person who set it in play or otherwise) to undo it, I just made the game less fun for someone else, for what? Some RP thing that may or may not be a meaningful exchange? Meh.
*Note: Not my actual opinion. Example purposes only.