The Arx Secrets Thread
-
For years I’ve been like, man when Arx closes someday, I want to have a big thread where folks can spill various fun secrets and people can be like, “Wtf was X thing that happened,” or “favorite bit of lore,” or wtfe.
Well HERE WE ARE.
Some of mine I’ve already spilled IC, but.
Aleksei was a Skald kid. (I had to fit this into my idea of his parents’ marriage so they were ON A BREAK for a year okay, Aleksei’s dad is kind of a hardass tbh so clearly his parents weren’t sure if they were still working. BUT then they reunited and his dad raised Aleksei as his own.)
Berenice was the reincarnation of Alysa Laurent, who was a former Herald of Oblivion. She had a lot of unsettling dreams about it and very distinctly felt the need to act out sometimes just to make some noise. She didn’t end up being a fan of Oblivion OR Death in this lifetime. #TeamIndependentPower
Back in the day, Valkieri’s starting secret was that his oldest brother, who had died recently, had been replaced by a Mirrorborn.
Bastien was originally a member of House Rubino but embezzled from the house. He bolted when he was about to get caught and basically got bought by an agent of Cardia who sent him to keep an eye on the Black Mummers.
Calarian was originally my OC! I donated him to the roster. I wrote his secret, which was that he could speak every single language. (I kind of figured maybe it was being Godtouched by Vellichor?)
I have definitely had stuff over the past couple months where I’ve been like “what WAS that thing about,” but I’ve forgotten them all in this moment, so I’ll have to come back to it.
I think maybe the bit of lore that blew my mind the most was finding out who Zircon was (the original Seraph of Destiny). It was just one of those total mindflips where the very idea of it would never have occurred to me. And I didn’t interact with Zircon at all or do stuff in his area of things. Just from the couple of clues about him.
-
I’d love to understand WTF happened in the whole game bc I still don’t get it lol
-
Mihaly’s secret related around stars and how he had noticed that the number of stars in the night sky had been increasing over the years and how that might be a Bad Thing. Eventually, it was revealed that his soul is not a mass of webs like most humans, but stars and constellations(I never did figure out if he had some kind of First Child lineage or not). Eventually he became one of, if not the only(to my knowledge at least)Star Mage in Arvum. Fun Fact, Star Mages are technically necromancers since they’re empowered by the souls of dead First Children. Eventually he’ll learn to do something akin to Astral Walk.
I never got to explore Volya’s, but it there’s something about him never getting sick and healing faster than most people. As well as having constant dreams about being on fire. I wish I had spent more time trying to figure out what that meant.
And now that I’ve spent time with Geralt, he was convinced by Asger to kill Somhairle, which allowed Asger to become Duke of Crovane. This played a part in his Crossing to get past the death and the understand that he was no longer Asger’s weapon.
All my other characters I never had long enough to really develop their own secrets that would be worthwhile.
-
Victus used to be a paladin in Silver’s guard. His soul was sworn to the Sentinel to fight the Abyss. Had a neat cameo as his past self guarding the hierophants and druids to seal the Gyre originally. That’s about it for secrets that aren’t open, as thralldom and the Nightstar were both pretty obvious.
Daemon was a Cardian spy sworn to Sangular who faked his death and morphed into Modi.
Modi was also a Cardian spy for Sangular. He found an unhatched egg during an expedition to Cardia and carried it around like his own child.
-
@Dreampipe gdi daemon
-
I think (most) of Sen/Shard’s are basically public knowledge at this point, but I’m gonna mention Derovai’s because there was something very funny surrounding it.
So, Derovai had two secrets. One was just “he suspects supernatural stuff exists”, more or less. The other is the one that’s relevant, because that one is how he’s actually a spy for the royal family of House Valardin. If anyone ever saw that Hidden Dragons clue, yeah, basically that. This is a very cool secret that is…also a very bad one, because it relies more or less entirely on said House Valardin royals to be active, and nobody’s secret should really be tied that strongly to other PCs being around.
So I picked up Derovai years back a while after another player dropped him and, afaik, left the game. I mean that player no ill will, but there was some weird baggage that I walked into and basically no journal entries to warn me of any of it or tell me wtf had actually been going on. I eventually just decided Derovai had been experimenting really heavily with Dust for a while before dragging himself out, and had him refer to that particular period of play as his “poetry phase”. So every time I ran into something extremely weird that had happened with another character, that’s what I broke out.
One day, like, I don’t know, a year or something after I picked up the character, having learned that this previous player was weird about his secret as well, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder…
Did he ever actually tell the Valardin PCs that his secret was that he was their personal spy that they should already know about?
So I paged Alis, and lol, no. No, he had not.
-
Remember when that dude died because he tried to fuck a bear? Well, Riagnon was not that bear but was a bear. And from then on forever after when people found out he turned into a bear they would bring that up and be like did that dude try to fuck you and you ate him
-
I… I don’t know if any of you guys ever realized this, but Mia was the Horned God’s Daughter.
-
Tikva turned out to be the daughter of the Dirge. She was also the reincarnated soul of the little sister of the Dirge and his twin sister, the Lianhan. Led to a pretty cool arc by the end. Took awhile but man, that ending was powerful as hell.
Aureth’s secret was pretty much that Death had saved his ass from an untimely end with a vision when he was 8. I think his being touched by Death became pretty obvious shortly after I figured it out, though. Lol.
Pietro’s secret was that he was furyborn! Which became pretty apparent when he died.
I wrote a few other secrets over the years.
-
When I took Duarte his secret was “Shreve says you can do some dark magics if you wanna!” but Shreve was already deader than dead dead.
So I built Fealty Volitant (a secret spy org) instead and had spies in all of your houses and orgs (sorry). It was inside and funded by Crossroads Casino and all the fashion shows/events we did there.
Wasn’t ever used for any PvP stuff and we didn’t target PCs with it, but we did know a lot about a lot of folks for a bit and got to pretend we were sneaky which was kinda cool for a bit.
Then a tree started growing out of Duarte and he had other things to worry about. Then he had a mental breakdown (ic reason for a very long period of inactivity). I almost rostered him but decided not to and kept logging in every other day or so just in case I got back into the game again.
I also played Avary but I retconned her secret because I really didn’t like it, even though I loved the character. She wanted to reinstitute an organized discipleship for Sentinel that veered away from the esoterica of courts and law and be more accessible to commoners and regular folk. Her story ended the best possible way I could imagine and I’m very happy with it.
I wrapped up Jeffeth at the end and I love the big guy, but he was very well played and very well taken care of by his original player so I don’t feel comfortable talking about his story since it’s not /mine/. But he did find a sense of redemption for past life things that haunted him in his threshold crossing and that was nice. Shout out to OG Jeffeth for keeping very good plot notes, rfrs and journals!
-
Nurie had a full back tattoo of a rainbow maned unicorn that showed up in full technicolor (but ONLY in mirrors) on the night that Glittermaw first appeared and burned down that guy’s house in the upper boroughs! He and little singing rainbow squirrel demons visited her sometimes. He left a hoofprint impression in her workshop for a birthday present that had demonic glitter in it that would refill but would also catapult the quality of what she was working on super high if she used it. I did meet one person who I think has a secret as being one of the people who summoned him, but im not sure! Anyone who knows Nurie knows how amazingly spot on appropriate and perfect that was for her (and well worth the wait for a staff created secret). Glittermaw said she was a friend to all of Ruin’s children. I dont know agar that means exactly but it was fun. Anyone who saw her tattoo in the mirror would have it wink at them! She finally got to hug him in the lowers battle.
Edris started out hearing the song of the forest once he got to know the one where he was. Over time it deepened into two way communication. Getting to call up the treants for sanctum was amazing and left me teary eyed. That secret gave me such joy to play over the years–made for very enriching ways to inform play.
Ouida was Corusadin’s rider at the caer’alfar battle and defeated the champion there in combat. She also got to help raise/habituate to humans Cynara when she hatched.
So many fun things.
-
this thread makes me really wish I had been able to see the characters I played through to the end of their stories, because they really did have some fascinating things going on that I was so constantly entirely wrong about whenever I guessed that it became sort of a running joke, especially Valenzo, lol.
wtf was his deal?? Massively Abyss-tainted for some reason according to the Nox’alfar king, he had a rude af mirrorborn, and he was being hunted by those shadow creatures…but even after RL years the poor dude still hadn’t made head nor tails of it. I still wanna know!!
Gaston was relatively straightforward in comparison…when he was a lad, he ate four dozen eggs every morning to help him get large, see. NOT SORRY NO RAGRETS
-
Esme’s are pretty known. I’m not going to out secrets that others have that she knew.
Esme is GodTouched by Limerance. I know, everyone is super shocked by that. – She has the skill of persuasion and convince people to do things.
She tried to cast before it was a thing and got caught between worlds or something. She was saved by a Teddy Bear – more on that.
When she looked in the mirror she would have cat eyes and could sometimes see in the dark.
Her soul belonged to Princess Dulceali Valardin, the Fox Dragon. She’s the one from Velenosa that took over as High Lord of Valardin. I would get some visions of climbing walls and making battle tactics.
When she persuaded a tribe to come back to the fold in Tor, she accidentally founded a cult to herself. Never did anything with that, but it was funny background. I’d have to look back to remember the name.
She has a possessed (ish) Teddy Bear. She brought him to battle with her. He comes to life and talks, but normally when she’s half asleep and not usually to her directly. He talks to the shadows around her. One was that she didn’t know her lineage and could have saved from the threat in the North. I wish I followed up on that.
Most of these were known if people just asked or brought it up around her. She was a little protective of her teddy bear friend though.
Even if SOMEONE is a MONSTER and showed it being ripped apart at a bloodmoon party.
Oh, yeah, and she walked around as Juliana Pravus telling fortunes as I played guess the character to try to make them believable and effed up.
-
@mietze said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Ouida was Corusadin’s rider at the caer’alfar battle and defeated the champion there in combat. She also got to help raise/habituate to humans Cynara when she hatched.
Aleksei’s family the Morgans are descended from House Morganis, an old Cardian house that came over with Valar and stayed all loyal and whatnot. So Aleksei and some of his siblings were trying to get in touch with Relavor? Who sometimes watches over families like that? And we got a message that was like, “Fine okay but only if you bring that one knight. OOODA? I don’t remember.” Sadly I think you stopped playing here not long after, and I lost some sibling players and didn’t want to pursue it without them, so we never did end up meeting Relavor! But we definitely would’ve brought you.
@RightMeow said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
She has a possessed (ish) Teddy Bear. She brought him to battle with her. He comes to life and talks, but normally when she’s half asleep and not usually to her directly. He talks to the shadows around her. One was that she didn’t know her lineage and could have saved from the threat in the North. I wish I followed up on that.
omg WHAT, that’s amazing.
I know a PC who had a mirror with the soul of a former Archduchess in it, and she was sassy as FUCK and it was always amazing when she’d mouth off.
-
I know someone who’s secret is that they have a book written by their future self called the Confessions of (Name). They would get clues/dreams/etc about stuff about them. I don’t think they followed up on that either.
-
If Ysbail had any juicy secrets, I was too thick to figure them out, or just… not able to navigate the clues. Add on a lack of enough time to dedicate to uncovering things, and you got a big pile of woe. It’s fine though.
-
@Roz i still laugh every time when I think of the first time Ouida met Cynara in game. She truly was a dumb jock of a knight and I loved that about her. I never imagined she’d have any kind of magic so like she had like 1 mana and 2 int and I must have failed like 5 or 6 checks in the scene in order to recognize Cynara until Herja mercy pulled for me. Ouida had been trying to chat up/flirt with the Pretty Lady the entire time and then…DOH!! But that would have been fun to travel with the Morgans!!
Also another fond memory came from NPCs having the same names as unrelated PCs. So this group of players and their pcs who clearly paid MUCH MORE ATTENTION than I did about lore abd history were like talking about how they should kill/take out the evil person Lady X, and Ouida was like what the fuck Other Lady X is hot and nice they’re not evil, and then the other pcs started getting worried like wtf Ouida how can you think Evil Lady X is hot and nice and where the fuck was this that you even saw her–and it went around and around and sidelined an Important Business Meeting for like 45 mins because me and my pc were too dumb to realize what they were actually talking about.
-
In thought of two questions I never had answered!
-
Who was Saverio? I know he was an NPC and I think he may have been at least a little evil but never figured out what his deal was.
-
What was the deal with the times a bunch of reincarnates got snowy visions about saving the world? I think I heard they were from a Rex living up north?
-
-
Most of Orazio’s family died of the plague when he was a young man. He nursed his mother, father, and a couple siblings through their horrific deaths–and then caught it, himself. In a moment of despair he tried to end his life and ended up summoning a demon instead. He agreed to its deal in order to save his life.
So, yes, he was possessed for a good portion of the time I played him. It didn’t control his behavior, but he always knew it was there. Watching. It was exorcised by Prism and Copper, but by that time…well, Orazio didn’t have many friends, and it was the only one he felt truly understood what he’d been through. So he was able to keep it in a bottle and was attempting to reform it. But mostly just…talking to it like he couldn’t talk to anyone else.
He also attempted to mend the relationship between the Nox and the Compact after the whole Nox diplomatic visit thing and ended up accidentally secret married to the Nox ambassador. He used that connection to get the weapons that had been originally on the table and distribute them, as well as to get part of the key that was necessary to restore Alaric to sanity.
Finally, when he died, his secret wife had him reincarnated as a Nox instead, and he was briefly Kathivor, Ambassador to Arx.
-
I think mine were both fairly well known? I had no idea how to use them without telling them so I did!
Norwood: The Laurent house sword, Queensguard had a soul hanging out in it that would talk to Norwood. The soul’s name was Pimsley Egglesworth, and he was Jonathan Baseborn’s (Laurent founder & Norwood’s past self it turns out) steward. He liked to lecture Norwood about etiquette and was part of why I played Norwood as stiff as he was sometimes. The sword was also blessed to protect the heirs of Laurent so in super tough scenes were stiff seemed super bad i would excitedly text the GM “CAN MY SWORD GLOW PLEASE??” and if they said yes Queensguard would take out all of Legion’s baddies in a scene and it was awesome. Norwood asked once if Pimsley wanted to be freed (gonna go to Aureth and be like “remember that stick I gave you? Want to help me free a soul?”) But Pimsley was all “bah, I’m stay with you.” (Cue tears)
I loved that damn sword. I would spend happy hours imagining Norwood and it talking. Every scene involved the sword in the back of my mind saying things to Norwood no one else could hear (typically when I KNEW he broke etiquette!). When Margerie and Norwood married he told her about Pimsley and she put a kibosh to the sword living in the bedroom with them. >.>
While I’m sorry Laurent lost their house sword, the poetry of its ending with Norwood literally made me cry. When Queensguard was broken it released the spirit. Norwood died at the same time and Pimsley and Norwood went back to the wheel together - thus tears.
Kenna: She had a knack for finding lost things, or being found by lost things. She looked into it a lot until it lead to the Prince of Secrets (because I can’t find his name?). She got to visit some cool places based off stuff she found. One was this museum with possessed toy monkeys and clowns. I always wanted to go back again but couldn’t find people to join me. X.x Also people were all “wtf stop looking. Bad idea!” And it freaked her out. I eventually got tired of the pull and also ooc nonsense I can’t remember now so stopped playing. I do miss her energy.
