There’s also a level of Catch-22 in it. 1: Abelard, Bridget and Camille look out their apartment window and see a chupacabra digging through the dumpster. Abelard screams, runs for the closet and curls up in there having a panic attack. OOC, Bridget and Camille bitch about what an attention-whore Abelard is and how his reaction derailed the scene, as if it’s 1994 and he walked into their wedding scene, smelled a peanut, and went into anaphylactic shock. 2: Abelard, Bridget and Camille look out their apartment window and see a chupacabra digging through the dumpster. Abelard says, “Huh. It’s so ugly it’s cute,” and helps investigate. OOC, Bridget and Camille bitch about how Abelard ought to be freaking the fuck out, he’s only a mortal after all. 3: Identical to 2, except Abelard says, “HOLY FUCKING BALLS!” instead. Not that the fearless, blase, too-cool-for-anything quipper PC isn’t a real thing and a tedious drag, but it’s also not bad to examine your reaction, see if really there’s just no pleasing you, or no pleasing you if you’re Abelard, and entertain the notion that maybe Abelard is playing his PC correctly. I’ve definitely seen both ways.

Yes, absolutely, celebrate we hit 92.5% on the performance framework (the rest of the district is 64% or below). And in the same breath tell us to stop doing everything we were doing. Yup. That makes sense.

The Kingdoms of Ariwn “One stands before us in Durance. Speak thy name and testament.” It is sometimes said that there are grudges between living kings and queens of Ariwn that predate the founding of any other realm in Catenys. This is not at all true. They are, strictly speaking, not living, as those immortals died and received their gift of eternal undeath from the Blood Patriarch a long, long time ago. The grudges, however, that much is exceedingly true. One can spend a lifetime trying to learn the cause of a truly ancient vendetta, only to discover in a passing comment that the reason a lord despises Umbros is because some Umbral noble nine centuries ago made the mistake of referring to his demesne as a ‘petty kingdom scarcely the size of a duchy’. Ancient vampires, as a rule, are proud creatures. Many in the other realms fear us, and not without cause. Not solely due to our ancients that might spend centuries plotting revenge for some slight that not a single living soul would ever remember. But they see in us a realm of predators. Of dhampir desperate to win approval of ancient rulers that may accidentally call them by the name of a great-grandparent. Of newly sired vampires, struggling to control their thirst and obey the laws of the Blood Patriarch. And most of all of the Lycan Clans, who are portrayed all too often as war-crazed ravagers, relentlessly seeking to win glory for the Fleshreaper. Ariwn is not a realm overburdened with unity. “Eternity is overfull of immortal mediocrities. Become a legend.” In the ages since Arx was sealed, Ariwn became a popular destination for scholars hoping to speak to ancient beings who could provide answers to the many historical questions and invaluable firsthand accounts of events with no living witnesses. They were inevitably always greatly disappointed. Many ancients will claim that the never-seen Blood Patriarch has forbidden the elders from speaking about the circumstances around Ariwn’s founding, and there may even be some truth to that. But among both the born and created children of the elders, most strongly suspect that the real truth is that speaking of the past simply bores them. The appetites of vampire and lycan alike are easily maintained by the willing herds, but the desire for entertainment in Ariwn is insatiable. For the Lycan, this means ever higher contests of glory seeking, and great hunts to war with Afflictions and the demonspawn within. For the children of the blood, this often means hoping to become Gifted, and slipping to Shroudwatch to start one’s Durance likely over the stern disapproval of an ancient being that detests change. For the elders, the desire to see something new in unchallenging frivolity makes Ariwn the most rewarding destination for bards, harlequins and mummers’ troupes in Catenys. And if a jape should go too far and a jester winds up impaled upon one of the peaks of the Bloodrange, that is simply a reminder that one must know their audience. “Even in the land of Night Unending, remember that the morrow is never promised.” To the rulers of other realms, Ariwn presents a vexing puzzle. In theory the kingdoms formally possess a nominal highlord in the Blood Patriarch, but centuries may pass without even a single word from him, and even nobles of Ariwn that attempt a summons tend to vanish without a trace. In practice, this means that Ariwn is compromised of scores of independent petty kingdoms that are very loosely affiliated, lightly constrained by ancient treaties and traditions set down from its founding. The solution for most realms tends to be to pretend Ariwn simply does not exist, and conveniently forget that it is the eastern bulwark against the Deadlands that causes the dead to divert instead against Aythirmok. With Ariwn’s veil of darkness over the land, the ancients have never shown any interest in expanding beyond those borders, and while there have been some significant wars over the centuries brought on by Lycan Clan expansion, Ariwn has stayed largely untouched for ages past. Which is exactly as the elders have liked it. The comparison was often made in Catenys between Arx and Ariwn, two unchanging bastions, one under an impenetrable shroud and one under a veil of darkness. There is a joke often told in Ariwn about its stasis, a grim humor among the younger vampires and dhampir who bemoan that they would never get to wear a crown from the ancients. ‘No need to fret, the elders will abdicate the moment the Shroud of Arx drops.’ The elders are no longer fond of that joke.

@pavel Next you will ask to ban yourself geeze!

I just showed child the Tom Holland/Zendaya lip sync battle. She died.

@xCroaker I agree about the emailing. I know it’s possible, but I don’t think I would want to do it as a player or want to ask players to do it as an admin. Your sheet looks pretty good, BTW!

And they are gone forever now. Edit: Our troll would be appaled I decided gender neutral is better.

Well, I think I know how to filter some player temperament through using my knowledge of the English language. It certainly gave me some application question ideas to send to Staff if there is a Player Helper application for Arx 2.

(Offensive junk)

@Faraday A better question is why are you spending this much effort trying to detect LLM usage in the first place? If you can’t actually tell the difference between what some idiot romantasy author wrote and what some less-censored chat gippity clone spat out then it really speaks ill of said romantasy author. Maybe xir needs to just git gud? Has she considered applying to Panda Express? I heard they’re hiring lately. You can even get a job there if you’re a White man.

This strikes me as such an obvious doxxing vector. Pass.

@bear_necessities this is what I want to know.

looks at Among Us update with the Judge role looks at @meg and @tez, drops off below Innersloth video that says everything necessary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqX21F0c_w0

Oh man, what I would give to log onto PernMUSH once more, just to look around. So many happy and bittersweet memories of the place, and how it changed over the years I played there. Up till about a year before COVID, the last ‘owner’ of the database kept it online; then it dropped connection, and I haven’t seen it since.

@Roz this one kind of fucked me up

Well, I’ve already done more than I thought I’d be able to do. [image: 1787079960552-563b6d65-97aa-4f67-ae8b-158dedace629-image.jpeg] I’ve added an Action Panel for players and a Referee panel for Referees. [image: 1787080024859-a5812c4c-90f7-4c3e-8ffb-08b357f56b7b-image.jpeg] Anyone in the scene can be made the referee. So if you only have two players and they want to throw down, they could. This is what the designated referee would see when they call up the panel. Non-referees would only see who was set as the Referee. Technically, they’d have the option to override that, but I’m going on the assumption that all players are here to have fun. The Referee can override just about everything in the scene, including when a new Turn begins(which resets all maneuver selections). [image: 1787080175380-659e0d9f-2a21-4640-9600-06a93e585ed7-image.jpeg] This is what a player would see. They can select their maneuver and target and lock it in for the turn. When maneuvers are locked in, or if the referee changes anything, emit a generic message to everyone in the scene (just letting them know what the action was, not the specifics of that action). My plan now is to give the referee an “Execute Maneuver” button that does exactly that: executes the maneuver and emits the results to the scene. It would also tabulate and apply any damage or whatever. All of this is scene-specific, so in theory, a fighter could be in multiple fights in multiple scenes, and everything would be okay. I wasn’t sure I’d make it this far but I think it’s all coming together nicely.

Lindaaaa is styled Lindaaaa even outside of MUdom in the GoT fandom. “Blood of Dragons”, Lindaaaa and Elio’s MUSH, is specifically approved by GRR Martin. He even linked it. George R. R. Martin began to write this epic series and did not make a concordance, bless him. There are interviews of him kinda bragging on this, tapping the side of his head and saying “It’s all in here.” Westeros.org was originally the BoD’s game page and wiki. It expanded into a general fan-site with news and forums and a wiki that’s a really fantastic concordance. By 2000 it had gotten pretty good and L & E shared it with GRRM, who uses it. Or, if you take him literally in an interview, just telephones Elio about any continuity thing an author or writing team usually looks up in a concordance. Linda and Elio didn’t work on the show, except for the Swedish subtitles. For five seasons of it they did do commentaries for every episode. As far as I know, they consisted mostly of casting complaints that came across as racist and complaints where the show deviated from the novels. It didn’t seem to go over well. They did spend a lot of time trying to say that BoD being approved by GRRM means any other MU is disapproved. I doubt that GRRM, a TTRPG player, could fail to understand that some people might prefer another set of GMs and another in-world scenario and setting. I had a lot of fun running Game of Bones MUSH and miss it, though it wouldn’t do now since inconsistencies with House of the Dragon would make a mess.

Wisconsin let me the fuck down yesterday. It had one job. Whatever, I’m drinking myself into oblivion, because that’s what Sconnies do.

@NotSanni said: This has reminded me to back it I’m glad I posted something then, as there is only 3 days left to back it. Adding into this, I would love to see this expand into a megagame. It may take away some of the mini-games for the wizards - for instance, of the noble court positions are played by players, then the Warlock loses a chunk of what they do - but I think there is the start of a fantastic megagame hiding in here, especially since megagames tend to be a collection of various role-specific mini-games mixed with the politics of a bunch of various factions with disparate goals stuck in a big room together.

If something is advertised as a bar scene, a karaoke night, or auction, I just don’t go. Avoid contributing to boring RP by not being there. Otherwise it helps if you do a passable imitation of somebody who is paying attention to what people are saying to you. I use Pyrephox’s method of a) reacting to what people give me, then b) do something that takes the action further and give other people something to react to. RP is a game of catch. Catch the ball and throw it. Don’t sit there gormlessly hanging onto it.