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Announce post #3343: Oblivion's Portent & Lexadhra, the Indelible
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3/28/2022 at 0:58
Ictinus, the Architect
Everyone
Oblivion's Portent & Lexadhra, the Indelible
Hi folks!
With the return and rebirth of Niuri and Her transformation into Lexadhra, it is my pleasure to present to you: Oblivion's Portent.
Portent is a three player instanced dungeon located off the shores of the Dyisen-Ashtan Memoryscape, accessible via the ghostly ferryman at v71389. Once on the shores of memory, you will need to TRAVERSE MEMORY in order to enter the dungeon proper. Inside, you will find a number of challenging boss encounters to overcome as well as 'trash' style denizens to fight through on your way there.
NOTE: The instance will not start until you have three people inside.
Unlike Beneath, Portent is a non-linear dungeon experience; after the first boss, you may choose to tackle any of the subsequent three in any order before taking on the final encounter: the Avatar of the Other. As you proceed through the dungeon, an echo of Lexadhra will recant the Tale of Revelation that was just told to the world, allowing those who were not present to experience the story for themselves.
Completing the dungeon will award currency in the form of 'silver pennies' - this remnant of Azhoa (the world before) can be spent in the shop adjacent to the shores of memory for a variety of rewards!
Alongside this release, we have also drastically reduced the costs of the rewards from the Beneath dungeon shop, and added a new figurine set to it!
Speedruns are not yet available for Portent but will be enabled after we've monitored the release and made any required balance tuning to the encounters. This is a difficult instance but hopefully it's also a fun one with lots of unique mechanics!
As for Lexadhra, She joins us as a permanent addition to the Sapience Pantheon. Having reformed from the ley with scattered memories, projecting Herself in the guise of five Elder Gods in an attempt to anchor Herself properly in time, Lexadhra exists now as the Goddess of Memory, and HELP LEXADHRA is worth a read! While She aligns Herself with Spirit, Her tastes and interests are vast...
Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 16th of Lleian, in the year 501 MA.
Ictinus, the Architect
Everyone
Oblivion's Portent & Lexadhra, the Indelible
Hi folks!
With the return and rebirth of Niuri and Her transformation into Lexadhra, it is my pleasure to present to you: Oblivion's Portent.
Portent is a three player instanced dungeon located off the shores of the Dyisen-Ashtan Memoryscape, accessible via the ghostly ferryman at v71389. Once on the shores of memory, you will need to TRAVERSE MEMORY in order to enter the dungeon proper. Inside, you will find a number of challenging boss encounters to overcome as well as 'trash' style denizens to fight through on your way there.
NOTE: The instance will not start until you have three people inside.
Unlike Beneath, Portent is a non-linear dungeon experience; after the first boss, you may choose to tackle any of the subsequent three in any order before taking on the final encounter: the Avatar of the Other. As you proceed through the dungeon, an echo of Lexadhra will recant the Tale of Revelation that was just told to the world, allowing those who were not present to experience the story for themselves.
Completing the dungeon will award currency in the form of 'silver pennies' - this remnant of Azhoa (the world before) can be spent in the shop adjacent to the shores of memory for a variety of rewards!
Alongside this release, we have also drastically reduced the costs of the rewards from the Beneath dungeon shop, and added a new figurine set to it!
Speedruns are not yet available for Portent but will be enabled after we've monitored the release and made any required balance tuning to the encounters. This is a difficult instance but hopefully it's also a fun one with lots of unique mechanics!
As for Lexadhra, She joins us as a permanent addition to the Sapience Pantheon. Having reformed from the ley with scattered memories, projecting Herself in the guise of five Elder Gods in an attempt to anchor Herself properly in time, Lexadhra exists now as the Goddess of Memory, and HELP LEXADHRA is worth a read! While She aligns Herself with Spirit, Her tastes and interests are vast...
Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 16th of Lleian, in the year 501 MA.
2
Comments
It resolves.
Because the reality of the situation, right now, is that "Lexadhra is a Spirit god" god immediately piped IC, all of Shadow immediately started digging in their heels, labeling her the enemy, and have dropped all intent to engage with her on that level. And you can't really blame them--we've never been given, in years, any indication that this is the way things can or will be. That when something is labeled "spirit," they're wholecloth the enemy. No matter what you put in a help file, no matter what line you tag on the end of an Announce, the immediate reaction, and probably a longlasting one, is going to be the one that's presently happening.
In my heart of hearts, I want my first paragraph to be correct, that that was the intention of this new god. I feel this way for a lot of reasons. One is that Shadow's pantheon is just kinda thin on the ground right now. Several of them are old concepts that show their age--most of them aren't piloted by an active player. So of course I'm going to be huffing the copium of "wow I hope this isn't how everyone seems to think it is, because that would really suck."
It'd really suck for Spirit to have a monopoly on "hey, you know what, Varian sucks!" too, which they kinda do at the moment**.
I've been disappointed by things in the past few months that turned out to be unfounded, but the level of faith it requires for me to be like "It's cool, guys, she's Spirit but she's gonna be down with smoking cigarettes and stuff" to people is just way too high at this moment, especially since the heels are already dug in deep, and loosening them from RP, just because she was already stated to be a Spirit god, is going to be a massive uphill battle (if that was even the intention).
**edit: I can't emphasize enough how concerning this is, and some of us are a little concerned that "spirit/shadow" is going to be dumped for Varian/AntiVarian and BL/Spines is gonna get shoehorned into that, which, plz don't, I beg of you.
I kind of suspect Severn is going to turn on Bamathis and that the end result will be Shadow and Spirit getting their own pro/anti-Varian schisms.
As an example: Bamathis, as a concept, would have flourished under a system of untethered gods. As it stands, it sounds like even his own tether is turning on him. Without tethers in the way, membership in his order would be more of a political/character statement than just 'another Shadow god'.
How do you roleplay supporting a Divine who was wrought to preserve Sapience and ward against Creation's enemies, especially if it turns out that the Creator himself could be this very enemy at world's end, not simply the Albedi gods?
Nonetheless, it'll be interesting to see how all the Divines in their roles will choose to react to this, because this is definitely a twist in the overarching story. Live for the moment, and struggle like a firefly until the last? I'm invested in seeing how our mindsets will all shift, and how the story of Aetolia will move on from here!
As a player this has been an absolute psychological trainwreck for me to roleplay. Lexadhra is amazing, don't get me wrong, however "Scorning everything about Ivoln" (Mind you, having been in Niuri's Order back when she got yeeted, its with good reason.) puts the Imperator of the Teradrim in an awkward place, and thankfully the playerbase in Bloodloch wants health for their org instead of splintering what are already fragile foundations, after years of infighting and secular organizations within it.
This will make us stronger, but I think faith needs removed from Tether (Or in the least those lines blurred a bit)....I like a lot of the points being made in this thread, and I think that we can work on this.
Right now, WEIRD PLACE TO BE. - EXCITING PLACE TO BE
So to echo @Nipsy, we're in a weird but exciting place. Hats off to everyone who has had a hand in creating this narrative.
In relation to the other commentary about the Divine, I'm also in the camp of untethering Divine and worship of those Divine. Whilst I'm not saying that every Divine in the pantheon should be a shade of grey, I also don't necessarily think that they should all be in one camp or another. Since Bamathis' inception, I've always been of the mind that he would have been a much more intriguing character if he'd been properly neutral, rather than allocated as a 'Shadow' god. The 'greater good' angle is a great way to get people to work together cross-tether. All it would take is a minor change in personality and policy. Let his followers then discuss how he is best served (ala conversion or genocide) or whatever.
I feel that Lexadhra is another Divine who, at first glance, appeals to both camps whilst sitting firmly in neither. It does seem a bit of shame that she's now been labelled a 'spirit' Divine. It would make for an extremely interesting political landscape between Divine if their stances towards one another were not based on tether but purely on their relationships. The recent drama between Omei and Damariel would have potentially had a much greater scope for conflict or diplomatic RP if the safety net of 'but we're both Spirit Orders, we shouldn't fight' had been taken away.
I'm also a strong supporter of larger consequences for those that defy Divine (or any creature that is a million times stronger than your character). Admittedly, the worst offenders are usually those who wouldn't engage in RP consequences and it's difficult to know what to do there beyond zapping. However, the Full One had a fairly creative and amusing way of handling that. I also think that the Pools know who is likely to lean into an RP punishment and who is not. Making Elene eat a whole whale or giving Nisavi a ducks beak were some pretty funny RP punishments. I'd like to see more of such things levied against players or even their orgs.
the dramas of life and death, Shadow and Spirit, the perfect springboard for intrigue and
histrionics. She eschews traditional values or tenets in favour of one singular demand: be
interesting.
This one in particular. Enorian is pretty much the closest you can get to having a city who is aligned exclusively with morality and honour. And the rest of the help file where it references 'making legacies permanent' and the IC chatter about how she prizes immortality is also concerning in that off first glance, it appears we have a spirit god who is pro-vampirism, but anti-undeath. How does this fit into the narrative of Enorian's staunchly anti-undead/anti-vampire position that is part of the foundation of the city and their pursuit of the prophesized Age of Dawn? Again, some of this is a LOT of speculation and I'm sure we'll know more in the coming days and weeks when we all interact with Lexadhra more, but I can't help but agree with Tetchta here. If there's going to be some shift away from Spirit/Shadow and more into goal/objective-oriented Aetolia, then there needs to be some major lore, endorsement from Gods, basically pulling out every trick in the PR playbook to make this change marketable to people who have RP behind their character's choices to stand for or against certain ideals. Lexa seems like a GREAT Goddess for Duiran to follow, but I'm not convinced she's right for Enorian.
From a player leader perspective, I think this is neat and I'm excited to see what comes next. But I want to ensure the integrity of my organization isn't compromised when going through any potential massive lore and RP changes that could drastically alter their direction.
Tell me how I'm doing!
I think all of the much more nuanced Elder Gods were meant to start training us for this new paradigm. Yanai's "I don't like Chaos but I guess you can smoke it on the porch" attitude regarding Omeiians was a model for it and, in the end, they weren't so incompatible after all. If Lexadhra ticks almost all the boxes, isn't that good enough?
Tell me how I'm doing!
a little umame or lemon into our meals to add complexity wait wrong forumsome thought into how to interact with the game as it sits and presents itself to our orgs IC. If you end up trying to jam your org into a tight, narrow space, it's just going to lose a ton of RP opportunities along the way. Honestly, the City of Light and Burning Evil Guys, probably more than any org, is the most ripe for creative, complicated thinking and exploration, given the setting of Aetolia as a Gothic Horror (and seeing those themes played up a lot lately.)