House Merging...

Erzsebet

Yeah, they're confusing Lex Bellicus with the Blood Stalking. Which. Is fairly understandable, since Blood Hunt, Blood Stalk. Eh. Nearly synonymous.

Not sure I agree that there's justification for the PK. I mean, even if it weren't me, the Voltaire CHOSE to offer the merge, sign the merge, and do the merge. They chose to not inform the Imperium or their Matron. They chose to agree to give up the name. And as it is their house, it is their choice to do so. Ve'kahi didn't do anything but offer terms (which were negotiable on most points) and sign the treaty. Which, given that it was what both houses wanted, I'm not sure why so much table-flipping is going on.

Lol-no-one-consulted. She was 'kahi's matron too, and Erz sent her a message for an audience that she never got. And she finally gets back to her after the fact with lectures. That was fun though. It isn't often you get to yell at a god without getting your face pwned by a zap.

Ezalor

Mm, I'm pretty sure the admin of Aetolia wanted to see this happen and also saw it as a chance to kickstart some Imperium stuff. I tried hard ICly to stop the merger and talk to the Divine Advisory of the Imperium but I got snubbed completely, not even a message back. Then afterwards they're all righteous indignity and Bloodhunt etc....eh....there's definitely IC justification for the hunt though. Imperium loses one of the first four Houses to a non-Imperium House and most weren't consulted at all on it. If the Imperium wants to retain any sort of appearance of having any power whatsoever, they have to do something about this.

It ended with a cool bit of activity though, the Imperium channel actually wound up being used for something and all the Council members ended up gathering in one place.

OOCly as I said before, I agree with the move as well. Ideally there should probably be 4 Houses total; D'baen is third overall on tophouses and we rarely have more than 4 people online at once.

Erzsebet

Eh. How'd you try to stop it ICly? All I heard is that you offered Ezrax a merge yourself, which would've killed an original house and lost the imperium house any way you swing it.

We've very rarely had fewer than 4-5 on at a time since the merge. It's SO awesome.

Mastema

Following on from:

"We've very rarely had fewer than 4-5 on at a time since the merge. It's SO awesome"

 The tophouse rating system still confuses me as Bouchard has at least 3-4 Blooded and two undead on at all points. Yet you still see other houses with 1-2 AFK members keeping their house active, because they entomb and never log off. In this regard it seems to really equat to squat in terms of how active a house really is, or is not.

As for the Imperium stuff, I think to some degree it is good they "fired" up and declared that they want blood for this. Do I think more than a single death and some verbal abuse is right... not really. Furthermore do I think we need less House... yes. But I also would hate to see Bouchard, Nebre'seir, Bahir'an, or D'baen vanish from the game. They are in the same domain as Voltaire was, being old founder houses created by Abhorash.  Then again I doubt the others newer house want to vanish either, so who decides and on what grounds do you say, "hey you merge"?

Arbre

House                     Score    Minutes    Average      Count
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Bouchard                  20572      19490       1082         18
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Count is the number of EMBRACED VAMPIRES logged on at any point in the last month (18).  Minutes are how many minutes those vampires have been online (19490).  Average is Minutes divided by Count (19490/18=1082).  Score is Minutes plus Average (19490+1082=20572).

Ezalor

Erzsebet said:

Eh. How'd you try to stop it ICly? All I heard is that you offered Ezrax a merge yourself, which would've killed an original house and lost the imperium house any way you swing it.

We've very rarely had fewer than 4-5 on at a time since the merge. It's SO awesome.

I talked to the House leaders, then Ezrax to try to convince him not to. I didn't actually offer him to merge, just that once it was clear I couldn't change his mind about merging that he should have considered an Imperium House instead.

I was actually the one who suggested to everyone to get in touch with the Divine Advisory to try to do something to prevent it. But well, I never got an answer and then the merger just happened. Seems Niuri only replied to Lunare and only after the fact to suggest a Bloodhunt.

Shinji

So now Voltaire is gone, what happens with their physical house(s)

Erzsebet

Ezalor: Ah. Yeah. I messaged Niuri for an audience as Erz and we never crossed paths before it was done. Some of the other Houses, amusingly, knew Voltaire was seeking a merge--and they knew, because Kiralla talked to most of them directly a long time ago to try and secure a merge with them. I know for a fact Alyssn made some loud whines about Kira's attempts to get her to agree to such.

Shinji: Voltaire's physical hall is being connected to Ve'kahi's hall in 'loch. The tower will probably remain locked up, since it's actually a player-bought, player-owned hall and regulating keys for it has always been a pain in the rear.

Ezrax

The two locations still exist, they're joined together via a portal-thing (or will be).

Lin

Nice thing, too: Voltaire peoples will have access to the defunct castle in Morgun Forest.

Azrael

Interesting snippet from todays Aetolia Newsletter, thought it appropriate to note here.

The merging of Voltaire and Ve'kahi

The ancient and prestigious Consanguine house of Voltaire merged with the rogue house of the Ve'kahi, stirring much controversy within the Consanguine Imperium. Many vampires remain angry at one of the four traditional houses, founded by a childe of the Primus himself, losing its significance with the merge.

Abhorash, the Primus, lingers in fretful slumber. Many anticipate his awakening in light of recent events, and the Imperium may soon know their progenitor's boundless will.

 

 

If this actually leads to Abhorash making a return, even if short lived, I am now highly interested in seeing how it pans out...even if I'm not overly fond of how it all started.

Ezrax

oh snaaaaaap

Lin

Damn. If I were to be uncompromisingly speculative, I'd say that the message is clear: the house merge does not matter, because Big A is probably going to make the houses quite obsolete soon.

Calipso

I smell some butt-whooping coming along.

Go Abhorash!

Ezalor

I'm actually really excited about this. I don't think it will lead to the destruction of Houses since that would cause quite an uproar but as I was ranting about on the first page, it might be the start of the Imperium actually becoming something and the Consanguine achieving some unity. Everyone trumpets about unity and banding together but when it actually comes time for them to make some sort of sacrifice on their part to achieve that the willingness stops. But Abhorash waking might actually kick something into motion! If nothing else it should be a good bit of fun and RP.

Alistaire

Kind of sad that it needs Divine/Abhorash intervention to get the Imperium/Houses to actually do stuff.

Ezalor

Alistaire said:

Kind of sad that it needs Divine/Abhorash intervention to get the Imperium/Houses to actually do stuff.

Well again as I said on the first page it isn't really that surprising that it's happened. The Imperium has no mechanical power to do anything. All the power invested into it has to come willingly from the Houses themselves. And well, the Houses are entirely separate entities now and Bloodloch is the city of the Undead, no longer the city of the Consanguine. With the state of things as they are it was inevitable that the Imperium would serve no purpose; it's like asking the guilds of Enorian and Duiran to give up their autonomy to submit to an organization that isn't impartial and will always favour one of these guilds. 

Azrael

I agree with @Alistaire but I also have to ask the question to everyone who's frequenting this thread.

"How do you think the Consanguine empire would be today if Abhorash was actually just an every day player?"

In a section of the game that relies so heavily on the lore that he is the beginning, the primus, it means a lot. I do look at it as being a greatly needed intervention regardless of how it all plays out. All of the originals so to speak are no more, Zahm has gone to that big pool in the sky, Para will never step foot back into an IRE game (or so I've been told), Faith's returns have been nothing more than 5-10 minute intervals of bantering about how far the vampire nation has fallen and then back to slumber, Zoharims tantrums have led to him being removed from every organization that he's founded, and I can't even remember the other chicks name right off the top of my head, Kauller? However spelled? It's difficult for lower bloodline people to be taken seriously, and since the introduction of "undead" the holier than thou stuff and most of the legacies have long been forgotten.

So yeah, totally looking forward to seeing what happens.

Erzsebet

I honestly don't think it'd be good for the game if Abh were to come back as an every day sort of player. Right now, he's history, 'living' legend, he's the end-all be-all badass of historical vampire whatsit. If he's around all the time, in an every-day sort of capacity, a lot of that historical/legend/badassery he has will fade, because history hasn't remembered his mistakes, his mistells, his faults, and everyone makes them.

Ezalor

Oh I'm pretty sure if Abhorash comes back he's going to be run by a Divine and played like a Divine. With super powers and everything.

He actually did wake up for a bit when D'baen was in the shitter and Lissaliah kicked everyone out. He forcibly took over the House, shrubbed Lissaliah (I think), did some other badass stuff. So yeah, not going to come back as just an ordinary character.

Nola

He was never just an ordinary character >_> but he is played by the same person, just like if you stopped playing Ezalor for a long time, and then came back, you'd still be the person playing him. 

Its the same for Abhorash. He is like a regular character - except he isn't at all a regular character. 

This is my understanding. 

Ezalor

Nola said:

He was never just an ordinary character >_> but he is played by the same person, just like if you stopped playing Ezalor for a long time, and then came back, you'd still be the person playing him. 

Its the same for Abhorash. He is like a regular character - except he isn't at all a regular character. 

This is my understanding. 

He was. Just a player like you or me, except he became important at the start of the game. He was someone who had to buy credits, could be PKed, could be contested (and that did happen, he got usurped out of Bloodloch before). Just an ordinary character who was important in the history, no different from someone like Mazzion.

Now though, he's a tool for the admin of Aetolia to use. So I expect it to be quite different.

Sarita

I was under the impression that he was played originally by one of the gods on Achaea, so I guess I always assumed he had some degree of guidance about the fact that he was going to set up a player-run vampire society. I did notice that in his recent "returns", it doesn't seem like whoever is handling the character is actually logging in the same way we do. Things like experience rankings stayed "unranked" even after he was seen walking around Bloodloch, talking to people, etc. I guess I just always assumed that his original player knew ahead of time that he'd be integral in the game's lore, and maybe had to agree to let the character be used even after he stopped playing it.

Alexina

I always thought he was an admin-controlled character. Like the beta version of the Dreikathi generals or the Nazedha leaders. He was long gone when I started playing, though.

Ezalor

Oh, I guess I remember it wrongly then. I started just a bit after he stopped coming around at all and heard all this stuff about how he got usurped and stuff so I guess I thought he was just a normal player.

 

Lin

Abhorash was indeed a player in the code sense of things. Hence why you can HONORS him, MSG him, etc.

He was never played by a regular player. There was never a random schlep who logged on one day and decided to create a rajamala named Abhorash. He was a character designed to jumpstart the game's vampire lore. If we'd done that stuff today, the admin probably would have roleplayed him as an NPC. Hope that clears things up.

Xavin

Erzsebet said:

I honestly don't think it'd be good for the game if Abh were to come back as an every day sort of player. Right now, he's history, 'living' legend, he's the end-all be-all badass of historical vampire whatsit. If he's around all the time, in an every-day sort of capacity, a lot of that historical/legend/badassery he has will fade, because history hasn't remembered his mistakes, his mistells, his faults, and everyone makes them.

If he were to show up all permanent-like, he would need to be one of those super bad-ass npcs, dreikathi style.

Edit: And that's what I hope happens. That he shows up and busts some heads on -both- sides of the game.

Calipso

Lin said:

Abhorash was indeed a player in the code sense of things. Hence why you can HONORS him, MSG him, etc.

He was never played by a regular player. There was never a random schlep who logged on one day and decided to create a rajamala named Abhorash. He was a character designed to jumpstart the game's vampire lore. If we'd done that stuff today, the admin probably would have roleplayed him as an NPC. Hope that clears things up.

This part made me think of Belladona.

Caspien

Erzsebet said:

Ezalor: Ah. Yeah. I messaged Niuri for an audience as Erz and we never crossed paths before it was done. Some of the other Houses, amusingly, knew Voltaire was seeking a merge--and they knew, because Kiralla talked to most of them directly a long time ago to try and secure a merge with them. I know for a fact Alyssn made some loud whines about Kira's attempts to get her to agree to such.

Shinji: Voltaire's physical hall is being connected to Ve'kahi's hall in 'loch. The tower will probably remain locked up, since it's actually a player-bought, player-owned hall and regulating keys for it has always been a pain in the rear.

Yeah, the tower isn't going to be opening any time soon.

Erzsebet

Works for me. Between the halls in 'loch we have a nearly 50-room estate, most of which don't even have repeating purposes. And another castle all its own in the Morgun. We don't really -need- another tower in the city.