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    The Arx Secrets Thread

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    • CornpoppedC
      Cornpopped @RightMeow
      last edited by Cornpopped

      @RightMeow I feel this. I was often warned off of trying to dig in to reincarnation stuff as Azova. And the last thing I wanted to do was cheese it and try to get an NPC to tell me. I regret not taking that leap, honestly.

      Until the very end, it was a pretty pervasive thing it feels like, to discourage people even if it was just IC. Only so many times an avenue of rp is closed off before you give up OOC as well.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 7
      • kalakhK
        kalakh
        last edited by

        The IC discouragement (provided it was just IC, which, sigh) made total sense with a lot of secrets, but could definitely get overwhelming and if people were already hesitant about digging into metaplot, it was really easy to accidentally push them into shying away from it. It’s definitely something that needs to be considered going forward, even if Arx 2 ends up not having character secrets (if it does, they’ll probably be handled differently anyway), or on any game with a similar idea.

        That said, there are very few things that irked me more than players putting OOC pressure on other players to stay away from their own plot hooks.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
        • kalakhK
          kalakh @Rinel
          last edited by

          @Rinel said in The Arx Secrets Thread:

          I was JUST informed Arx ended. A round of applause. Truly. It was an immense effort, and it looks like it paid off wonderfully.

          Rinel’s FIRST secret was that she could access a secret room in the Labyrinth that contained a book that was being constantly updated–possibly by Vellichor? I don’t know. But I was too scared to do anything with it, and so I never did any actions, and that ended up spiralling into Rinel getting removed from the Scholars and banned from the Labyrinth. Staff was kind enough to give her a second secret, which was:

          …I don’t remember. I think it was magic. She did the cleansing ritual and got told to fuck off by the Gods for her various and sundry heresies, which had a pretty profound impact on her mental health, and she ended up going down the path of the druids, for a bit, while still worshipping the Gods in her own heretical ways.

          I loved that character; I loved Arx. I’m glad it concluded instead of winding down into inactivity. Stories are always better when they have an end, no matter how sad.

          There will always be a little bit of Rinel Tern in me, and I’m genuinely grateful for it.

          Yeah, a quick glance at her original secret was that Vellichor was sending her information.

          RinelR 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • RinelR
            Rinel @kalakh
            last edited by

            @kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:

            @Rinel said in The Arx Secrets Thread:

            I was JUST informed Arx ended. A round of applause. Truly. It was an immense effort, and it looks like it paid off wonderfully.

            Rinel’s FIRST secret was that she could access a secret room in the Labyrinth that contained a book that was being constantly updated–possibly by Vellichor? I don’t know. But I was too scared to do anything with it, and so I never did any actions, and that ended up spiralling into Rinel getting removed from the Scholars and banned from the Labyrinth. Staff was kind enough to give her a second secret, which was:

            …I don’t remember. I think it was magic. She did the cleansing ritual and got told to fuck off by the Gods for her various and sundry heresies, which had a pretty profound impact on her mental health, and she ended up going down the path of the druids, for a bit, while still worshipping the Gods in her own heretical ways.

            I loved that character; I loved Arx. I’m glad it concluded instead of winding down into inactivity. Stories are always better when they have an end, no matter how sad.

            There will always be a little bit of Rinel Tern in me, and I’m genuinely grateful for it.

            Yeah, a quick glance at her original secret was that Vellichor was sending her information.

            I can only imagine his reaction as she continued being herself.

            “SHUT UP AND READ THE BOOK WHY ARE YOU TALKING NO STOP THAT ALL OF THAT IS WRONG JUST READ THE BOOK”

            bird's still the word

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • C
              CUmush
              last edited by

              Over the course of Arx, I had several bits that didn’t really stick and one that only sort of did. That was mostly due to environment, but his Secret was also really neat.

              As an aside about that environment part, when I was having trouble finding a good place to be, it was suggested that I consider the Laurent family. That was a good decision and essentially all the folks I encountered there were welcoming and pleasant and not at all pushy. Many kudos. But this is the Secrets Thread.

              So, I made an OC and requested a Secret, which was the style at the time, and got a super interesting one, but one that was closely tied (in my mind) to the Actions system that would eventually gum up because of huge numbers of requests. I’m sure that a more persistent and/or more creative player would have found a way around that, but I didn’t.

              Naka Laurent had an ability to study an existing Clue and reveal more to it that had previously been hidden. He learned through RP that there was a Ritual that had a similar effect, but he could do it without any obvious preparation, just by spending his time looking at the Clue and considering it. I used most of his Actions to do this and only found a couple Clues, here and there, that it didn’t work on. Usually I’d direct him to those Clues that had obvious redacted portions, were surviving fragments of larger works, and so on.

              So, those players who felt that Clues changed sometimes were correct. I wasn’t necessarily the only one doing it, but I was someone who was.

              Naka was kind of a generic bumbling Scholar with only a few friends who would go to tea and collect a fat check from House Laurent for just existing. And, then, occasionally, he would, also without great personal effort, “force” staff to go back and add more to the lore. It was great fun, but also added a great deal of work, and, as it became more and more obvious that staff were greatly overworked and I couldn’t put my finger on that workaround that would go without putting in more Actions, I just kind of drifted away from the game.

              And I do want to be clear that I never got a single hint of a complaint or hesitation about it. It was a personal decision to step back and, then, one day, I just never logged in again. I didn’t know for sure that that was my decision until weeks after.

              SnacknessS tsarT juniperskyJ 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 5
              • SnacknessS
                Snackness @CUmush
                last edited by

                @CUmush Naka was a delight!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • tsarT
                  tsar @CUmush
                  last edited by

                  @CUmush Hi! I played Cristoph, me and Mabelle’s player were just talking about how great you were.

                  Naka WAS a delight. ❤

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • juniperskyJ
                    junipersky Administrators @CUmush
                    last edited by

                    @CUmush LOVED Naka!!!

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • RinelR
                      Rinel
                      last edited by

                      Ok wait actually I have two questions because I’m legitimately curious:

                      1. what the HECK was the deal with Driskell Stillwater

                      2. what was the nature of the Thirteenth? Was it a divinity of its own accord, or some sort of natural rule of the universe, a mirror through which the gods were reflected, or both?

                      bird's still the word

                      RozR 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • RozR
                        Roz @Rinel
                        last edited by

                        @Rinel said in The Arx Secrets Thread:

                        Ok wait actually I have two questions because I’m legitimately curious:

                        1. what the HECK was the deal with Driskell Stillwater

                        He was a PC whose player made up a bunch of stuff.

                        1. what was the nature of the Thirteenth? Was it a divinity of its own accord, or some sort of natural rule of the universe, a mirror through which the gods were reflected, or both?

                        Tehom was Aion’s counterpoint.

                        she/her | playlist

                        saoS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • saoS
                          sao @Roz
                          last edited by

                          Relevant on the question of Driskell Stillwater, from the AMA Apostate did (https://play.arxgame.org/dom/cal/detail/7532/)

                          Apostate says, “Bless Driskell, but one should take everything they said, tie it up into a tastefully decorated package, and then yeet it into the sea. By happenstance they might have said something accurate somewhere in there but I have not yet seen it.”

                          let it be a challenge to you

                          RinelR 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • SmileS
                            Smile
                            last edited by

                            Tehom is basically the Abyss. Much like Aion is the Dream.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • T
                              ThatGhosty @Snackness
                              last edited by

                              @Snackness One of THE MOST emotional scenes of my Arx career as Khanne, that gargantuan scene! ❤

                              SnacknessS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
                              • SnacknessS
                                Snackness @ThatGhosty
                                last edited by

                                @ThatGhosty ❤ It was good stuff.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • D
                                  dvoraen
                                  last edited by

                                  Kind of adjacent to an Arx secret, but did revelation 30 (“Fable Knows Your Name”) have a large impact on PCs? Or was it more aimed at people during the time it was first introduced?

                                  Q saoS EvilgraysonE 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • Q
                                    Quibbler @dvoraen
                                    last edited by

                                    @dvoraen I just know I played Oswyn freaking the hell out when he got it. I thought he was in Big Trouble.

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 7
                                    • saoS
                                      sao @dvoraen
                                      last edited by

                                      @dvoraen it scared the fuck out of me when I first got it, lol

                                      let it be a challenge to you

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 5
                                      • kalakhK
                                        kalakh
                                        last edited by kalakh

                                        I came on staff well after a bunch of people had got that one and it was fairly normal, but my impression was it was one of those things where it was useful to keep track of who had hit a certain milestone of knowledge, but was otherwise just a neat thing to freak PCs out.

                                        The way revelations work is that clues are assigned to them, and they’re given a target number, at which point the revelation is triggered. The target number is based off a clue’s rating, so if your target number is 60, and you’ve got two clues with a rating of 30, the revelation pops. You can do more with it, like require certain clues to be known before a player gets the revelation even if they’ve passed the target number, etc, and there are a number of revelations that were never meant to be obtained by PCs that have a number impossible to reach with the clues assigned, that were used largely to organize GM notes/information.

                                        So the Fable revelation has a massive number of various clues assigned to it, particularly ones about magic, and PCs could hit the target number with any combination of those. Staff can also look at a revelation and see who actually knows it, so if we wanted to send a vision out to everyone that had got a certain revelation, it was pretty easily done.

                                        RE: Tehom, one thing I think might not have been entirely clear to players is that Aion and Tehom aren’t really entities in the same way the gods are, they’re more like the two basic forces of reality. Aion isn’t just the Dreamer, but the Dream (aka, the physical world) and Tehom is the Nightmare (aka, the abyss, the physical world’s dark reflection). This is why Aion didn’t have a seraph or Tehom a herald…they don’t need agents to enact their will or be their representatives, because they basically are everything, or at least contain everything.

                                        Edit: for the curious, unless I’ve missed some, there were 60 clues attached to Fable Knows Your Name:

                                        Primum in the blood
                                        Blood magic frauds
                                        The Castle of Count Corso
                                        Curious Case of Countess Cosette
                                        Copper’s notes on magical sleep
                                        Inquisitor Dalere’s report
                                        Unnatural coincidences
                                        Red Warden Memo
                                        Laughing at a Leer
                                        Sanguis Primus, a fragment
                                        Let the sleeper awaken
                                        Aldwin’s Memories
                                        Mad Murderer Of the Boroughs of 993 AR
                                        The Ring of Duchess Vedette
                                        I Must Forget
                                        Writs, An old journal
                                        Thus came the Despite
                                        Breaking Mirrorborn
                                        The First Conclave
                                        Francesca on Galling Brass Censers
                                        So, You’ve Joined the Forces of Evil
                                        The Triarch Demanded It
                                        A Fractal Forgiven
                                        Haunted Mementos
                                        The Thinnest Point
                                        Obsidian, Onyx, and Jet
                                        Hard To Read With No Light
                                        The Unwritten Word
                                        Lianne’s Analysis of Ravings
                                        A shadowy, smiling monopoly
                                        On Demon Binding
                                        A Treatise on Prophecy
                                        Navarre Strongoak Don’t Live Here No More
                                        Teatime with Onyx
                                        Interrogation Log of Prisoner #7835
                                        The Madman of the Panopticon
                                        Death and Oblivion: A Cautionary Tale
                                        Demonic Tissue Sampling
                                        Lord Barton’s Ravings
                                        Weaving - the style of Pure Magic
                                        Casting - Shav Nonsense
                                        Demon Worship and Black Stone
                                        Alrec’s Evil Twin
                                        Dying Old Gods
                                        Mostly Normal Bringer Head
                                        House of Questions, the living taint
                                        Petrichor’s Prayer of Stewardship
                                        Palladium’s Recollections on the War
                                        The Twin Sister of Lydia Nightgold
                                        The Blighted Land Soil Conditions
                                        Lovely Groves in the Oathlands
                                        Missing Headstones
                                        Percephon’s mirror at the blight
                                        Perrach and the Bringer
                                        Sugan’s Mirror
                                        A Puzzling Genealogy
                                        A Dream of Pyrite
                                        Claw for Claw
                                        Say My Name
                                        Fractal of the Abyss

                                        They’re all mostly from season one, I think.

                                        W 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                        • R
                                          Raaspra
                                          last edited by

                                          Some people already know some of this…

                                          Enyo was a Cardian agent, loyal originally to Ostrumadin, spying on Malar and his goons. Started out low, eventually climbed her way up in the ranks. But…

                                          Enyo was also Katya.

                                          …and Dagny. Then Katya.

                                          Then Enyo again.

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                          • W
                                            watno @kalakh
                                            last edited by

                                            @kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:

                                            Say My Name

                                            How many people had this one?

                                            kalakhK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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