House Merging...

Alistaire

Ohey, a bloodhunt. This should be entertaining. Watching the Imperium do something for once is pretty cool.

Ezrax

According to the Lex Bellicus, they can only do it outside, at night.

So far, neither of those have been true. So it's not a 'blood hunt'.

Azrael

Now that's funny, just sayin'.

Erzsebet

Yeah. According to the rules of the Lex Bellicus, that's how/when it's supposed to be done. And according to the gods, Bloodhunts aren't permitted at all--I was leading the Imperium when we nearly had one and Niuri stepped in and was like lolno.

An aside in regards to whomever tried to say that Voltaire has always been an Imperial House--that's not true at all. It came and went several times when it was a clan before Zhukov dissolved it. And when it stayed in the Imperium after everyone was forced in when they created it, the vote was exactly half for staying half for leaving. And half the people who voted stay haven't played since.

Damonicus

Also Verdecus ran Voltaire once. So it had to go away!

Zhukov

I do find it a bit distasteful that Kira ran both Houses when the idea of a merger came up. I'd have preferred several other Houses to the one that was picked. But it was Ezrax that wanted Ve'kahi and from what I've heard they are the only other House in the game that was open to the idea. I've thought for ages that there were too many Houses and we could do without a few of them but there is no mechanism for getting rid of one.

I don't think there was any metagaming involved despite the appearance of it.

Also, who cares about the Imperium? I still say I should get an honours line for dissolving it the first time.

Arbre

The only difference in this is that the House is called "Ve'kahi" instead of "Voltaire".  People are angry about a single word.

Zhukov

True, the only bad part is that all the old Voltaire news posts seem to be gone. Wish there were kept in one of the clans or something.

Make House Voltaire back into a clan? Those were good days.

Raeche

Well, I hope no one takes this whole thing personally, OOC'ly.

IC'ly it could be a travesty and all, but OOC'ly everyone knows there are too many houses and are probably thankful that the Ve'kahi people helped get rid of one.

Arbre

I'm still voting for Dar'sroth being disbanded.

Ezrax

I actually tried approaching D'baen first, and they were open to the idea. It was going to happen. But then Lisane, well, began her drama.

And so I turned to Ve'kahi.

At the end of the day, the point was to merge two middling Houses into one House that can compete with the other present 'heavyweights'. And lo, we're coming second on tophouses (though it might be a case of post-drama sightseeing).

Ezrax

Sorry about the multiple posting, I say things as they occur to me.

One of the agreements with this merger was that Ve'kahi join the Imperium, as Ezrax is pro-Imperium. Unfortunately I don't think they want us any more. :P

Ezalor

Yeah I'm going to vouch for Ezrax/Erzsebet here in terms of metagaming. I wasn't in charge of D'baen when it happened but I've heard from a former Praetor that Voltaire tried many times to merge into D'baen. So it wasn't just that Erz/Kiralla wanted to combine her two Houses into one super one.

Erzsebet

The agreement regarding the Imperium was actually just that the bit in the merge treaty stating that Ve'kahi would always be anti-Imperial be stricken from the formal agreement. It was not an agreement to join it anytime soon, only a verbal agreement that it would not be part of the treaty agreement.

But yeah. Kira tried to merge to Lunare when Beatrice was head, and then several times to D'baen under Alyssn's rule.

What I really don't understand is why everyone is bloody pissed off at -me- for it OOCly. Not at Erzsebet, but at -me-, as a player. I can wrap my head around the IC anger, but there are people refusing to talk to me OOCly now over this. Especially people who were all 'oh, that's a cool idea/ that's neat/ w/e' before the merge actually happened when I first started talking about it after Ezrax brought the idea to me.

Kiyotan

Vampires are stupid. Everybody should just join Duiran.

Erzsebet

I've always found Duiran to be really boring? Possibly because it's a pain to break into the RP circle in Duiran if you don't have a way in and sitting around throwing out RP bait at random passerby doesn't seem to work as well as it does in other cities.

Still. Even after this merge I still think we need less houses, be they original ones or otherwise. More notably, I think we need less dying/dead houses.

Calipso

hmm farewell legacy of Paracelsus, your house had an amazing structure and was an inspiration within the Consanguine beginnings, but was dealt a cruel blow of drama and internal corruption in the modern days.

RIP Voltaire.

Lin

Yeah, I totally remember all those huge RP events where Voltaire was heavily involved and brought amazing writing and story-work to the table.

Kiyotan

You delicious troll, you.

Ezrax

im so sorry you guys the game is going to suffer for the loss of this house i can tell

i understand if the game loses heavy revenue from this and i am deeply saddened

Kiyotan

Yeah I was totally gonna spend a lot of money on credits but now...

Illikaal

So this bloodhunt was illegally declared (allegedly) with the encouragement of Niuri. There is only one conclusion to draw from this.

METAGAMING.

Xavin

Lol. If they weren't killing them at night and only in the outdoors they were doing it wrong anyway.

Haven

Why is there only one right way to do a Blood Hunt? Is it a ritual/tradition of some sort? Because it seems to me that if a group of Vampires are hungry/blood lusting/feeling villainous/whatever you want to call it, they're going to go out and get their meals. Granted I can see why the night would be preferred over daylight but only outdoor hunts? Seems like a strange tradition/requirement considering Aetolian Vampires do not need permission from the owner to enter households or anything.

Also I don't see the problem with playing the bad guy and establishing it via Blood Hunts as a vampire. What's wrong with going to the refugee camp and slaughtering the NPCs and calling out to the world that your thirst on innocents has been saited/grows (essentially challenging all the goodies out there like the Templars or Enorian really)? What's wrong with a group of vampires stalking the highways and picking off players so long as it is established if not by the first kill then at least before the second attack is made that a Blood Hunt is occurring?

Xavin

The Bloodhunt, if I recall, traditionally happens only at night and only outdoors. I don't know why it is the way it is, but it is.

Arbre

It's in some literature somewhere, written by either Abhorash or (more likely) Zoharim.

Erzsebet

Yarr. It's also only supposed to be able to be called by 'The Oldest Among You' in addition to only running at night and out-of-doors.

Only tangentially related, I'm getting tired of people trying to tell me ICly "You did something wrong, come here and just die for it already." pretty much verbatim. I mean, -really- guys?

I'm fine (and so is Erz) with dying for her ideals and so on, but actively going out of my way to allow a bunch of idiots to kill me for no reason? (as in, no reason to just randomly allow them to kill me.) Tch. Pointless. S'okay. While the Imperium's mad at her, she may as well have some fun. This week should be interesting.

Angwe

Duiran needs a central meeting point (that makes sense for nominally busy people to be there) first. Duiran needs actual RPers to hang out there next.

Good on you for shaking things up and changing things, Erzekirraltlady. May the tears of your haters be as the juice of the sweetest berry 'pon your tongue.

Kiyotan

Angwe said:

Duiran needs a central meeting point (that makes sense for nominally busy people to be there) first. Duiran needs actual RPers to hang out there next.

What thread do you think you're in, exactly? o_O

Sarita

I think people are sort of mixing up Blood Hunts with the 6th Legacy. Blood Hunts originally were intended for the living, as a means of showcasing how evil vampires were, I guess. It would be announced at night, and vampire hunters would go out and pick off any living players they found outside, basically. Bloodloch used to have specific regulations for it in their laws, but it seems like it got removed after Niuri made an Imperium post saying that Blood Hunts being declared would attract the ire of the gods.

The 6th Legacy is what refers to vampires killing other vampires. Specifically:

THE SIXTH LEGACY: Destruction
Thou art forbidden to destroy another of thy kind. The right of destruction belongeth only to thine elder. Only the eldest among thee
shall call the Blood Stalking.

What should have been said is that the Imperium was going with a modified form of that, sanctioned by Niuri who was pissed off because as matron of Voltaire, no one consulted her on the matter. A majority of active house leaders approved a set number of deaths for people involved, accompanied by enemy status to the Imperium. While I do think the wording and announcements could have been handled better, I think there definitely is IC justification for the PK. Unfortunately, while I was sort of consulted on a draft for that announce post, it ended up going up before it got to a point that would have made more sense (the way I was looking at it, and the way that it seems to have been interpreted.) At the time everything was going on, my own focus was mostly on making sure people weren't going to get griefed out of the game over it all because there were people who wanted to just freely kill everyone using either the Ve'kahi or Voltaire title, not counting the number of deaths, and not having any regard for people being in or out of city walls.

As a player, I like the idea of houses being less "fixed" entities than guilds, and that the players in them have more control over the direction they take, up to the decision to join forces in order to prevent membership dropping off completely and that sort of thing. I also agree that the houses overall are probably stretched a bit too much in terms of what the playerbase can support. All that said, I think it could be done ICly without creating such a backlash.