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The Arx Secrets Thread
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@Rinel said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@hellfrog said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
You were told MORE THAN ONCE by staff that you were wrong about lore. You were told what to do differently if you wanted to play with the Faith.
Yeah, but I misinterpreted those as being IC corrections and not OOC ones. ¯\(ツ)/¯
buddy. BUDDY.
listen, people would not bring this up if you didn’t keep bringing this up, trying to insist that all the trouble you caused for folk were just silly misunderstandings that couldn’t have been helped. it’s like this weird thing where you bring things up in a “hah hah oops sorry about all that trouble! :3c” sort of way and misrepresenting stuff and kind of putting other people in the position of correcting the representation.
you were given OOC corrections. many times. from early on. a whole series of tehom dogma lore files were written for you. you just didn’t want to give up your interpretations of things. you clearly really liked the story as it had formed in your head, and i get that, and i’m sympathetic to the fact that when you end up in that situation, it’s hard to let go. but the issue you had wasn’t the moments of ignorance: it was that you did not change when given correction. and that became the problem of a number of other people to have to continually deal with.
i would say that the lesson you should take away isn’t that you should reach out earlier to staff about confusion. (not that you SHOULDN’T, i think that’s a good habit for everyone.) it’s that you should listen to and internalize the corrections, and learn to adjust course.
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I honestly don’t even remember exactly what I had wrong about the gods, because there’s been a lot of stuff that’s happened since then and my memory is particularly terrible these days. So I can’t argue with anything you’ve said! I don’t remember OOC corrections, but I also don’t remember a lot of things much more recent than that (I don’t even remember my password; I wanted to go look at some of her black journals yesterday and couldn’t), so I’ll accept the remonstrance.
I do remember being very upset and confused at accusations of purposefully misrepresenting lore when I thought I was doing my best to puzzle it out, so I know that there was some level of miscommunication happening. But I think your statement about the correct takeaway is a wise one.
ETA: I really am very sorry for all the people who had to spend time and effort cleaning up in my wake, especially given the info I’ve been given in this thread about my ignoring obvious attempts to course correct my being wrong.
ETATA: Also sorry about derailing this thread! Let’s get back to secrets. I’m happy to have a separate “correcting Rinel’s misrepresentations” thread if we need one.
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ANYWAY
GETTING BACK TO ARX SECRETS
How evil was the Inquisition? I heard gossip.
bird's still the word
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@Rinel ACAB but we weren’t particularly evil by the end. Idle, maybe. Evil, nah.
Faye had the best named weapons on the game.
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As a secret member of the Inquisition, I can definitively say it was disappointingly not evil.
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Man. I got told by someone that there were geases being handed out left and right.
I am disappointed that this was not the case
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The Inquisition? What a show.
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How about the Iron Guard? Kenna was always PRETTY sure there was something hinky going on but she was super loyal to Silas so kept her mouth SHUT.
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@junipersky I know the Iron Guard STARTED corrupted with Everard and everything. But all the major institutions kind of had the same thing there.
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The only time I ever got to do anything as a member of the Iron Guard was when the Knights of Solace called one of us over to arrest someone, and I showed up, and that player RP’d resisting that which I was fine with, we had a bit of a slapstick. And then the KoS players were like you can’t RP struggling with a suspect here because there are guards. And I was like why the fuck did you call me here then. And then there were a bunch of MSB posts ragging on people rping about secrets behind a closed door, but I didn’t even see or get told about the secret thing?? Even though I was behind that door??
@junipersky other than that ^^ we did do a lot of cleaning up cells after someone was obliterated in a cell, which was shady af.
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@TNP said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
The Inquisition? What a show.
Fact: Inquisition meetings were the best meetings.
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Pretty sure every institution run by PCs was actively not evil. No matter how corrupt they were before, PCs taking over pretty much scraped a lot of that away. Even the Triarchy, when PCs were made Voice and the Eater was ousted, stopped being apocalyptic and actively fought against some of the big bads.
ETA: Though the Triarchy was still pretty evil in the grand scheme of things.
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Lie, the IG’s had people being eaten by a couch.
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@watno said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@TNP said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
The Inquisition? What a show.
Fact: Inquisition meetings were the best meetings.
Everything’s better with a musical number.
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@Roz said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
And that’s why that PC type was so shitty and disruptive to the game. It constantly put other players in the position of having to clean up misconceptions and reinforce theme on overdrive, while people angrily insisted that the person was right.
I made stuff up constantly, but I really don’t think I mislead anyone because… obviously clueless and out of her depth himbo. If anyone took seriously Leta’s theories on cats detecting elves because they compete for the milk in saucers, they deserved it.
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I was wondering if I could keep asking about “secret” parts of lore. >.> There’s just so much I’ve been curious about, and staff did such a great job at creating story that was engaging in the amounts I was able to engage with. But there were some things I just couldn’t get to (like the above Dance of Skulls query) and some of it, as shown below, I didn’t really know much about IC so the topics never became a pursuit.
In short, I was hoping I could siren song (lower-case s siren) details about points of lore.
Destiny
- Was Destiny among the first creations, and was Aion the one who created them (presumably alongside the Kindly Voices)?
- What was the world even like when Destiny was alive? Were the inhabitants that existed then basically “puppets” subject to Destiny’s whims as to what would transpire? In other words, was the world like a theatre production with a rigid script that had to be followed?
- Did the Kindly Voices have to intervene in matters relating to Destiny? If so, how did that even work, if Destiny presumably had control of the Dream?
- What circumstances led to Destiny’s death? I don’t mean Skald’s concept of Choice entering the world, but more what caused Skald to even incarnate in the first place? Were the creations in the Dream becoming resistant to Destiny’s narrative and this led to irregularities that caused Skald and Choice to form, leading to Destiny’s death?
Zircon
- To my understanding, Zircon was basically the “Agent” of Destiny in the primeval world. His +finger quote is very suggestive of his motives, and becoming Herald of Stasis made a lot of sense to me if he was big on Order preservation. But what did he actually do in the primeval world while Destiny was alive? Was he the equivalent of Destiny’s Kindly Voice, which is to say, the director of the metaphorical play that Destiny was writing?
- Why did Zircon end up aligned with Stasis after Destiny’s death? Was it because Stasis best aligned with his ethos? I wasn’t really clear why Zircon aligned with anything elysian or abyssal when it’s my understanding he predated both…? Similarly, why was he desc’d as a Rex’alfar and took a Fractal name if he predated all that?
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I’m not staff, but I probably have at least some answers! Or at least ideas.
@dvoraen said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Destiny
- Was Destiny among the first creations, and was Aion the one who created them (presumably alongside the Kindly Voices)?
I believe at one point a staffer said that Destiny was created by Aion and Tehom together (along with the First Children).
- What was the world even like when Destiny was alive? Were the inhabitants that existed then basically “puppets” subject to Destiny’s whims as to what would transpire? In other words, was the world like a theatre production with a rigid script that had to be followed?
This is my personal speculation, but I kind of imagine it seemed like a regular world on the surface? The same way as any fantasy world that has some sort of fate or destiny mechanic. Like, I don’t assume it necessarily felt to the beings alive like they were in a production. I don’t assume that they all knew what the Book of Fate said, so probably not following a script? More just like their actions were preordained without their knowledge.
- Did the Kindly Voices have to intervene in matters relating to Destiny? If so, how did that even work, if Destiny presumably had control of the Dream?
I don’t have the answer to this one, but Destiny also had Zircon (by his original name, I forget) as its servant to help enact stuff, so I’d imagine it’s just – part of an overall structure. Destiny as a force kind of guiding the overall story of the world, but sometimes you need additional agents to run things, you know? (ALSO PERSONAL SPECULATION.)
- What circumstances led to Destiny’s death? I don’t mean Skald’s concept of Choice entering the world, but more what caused Skald to even incarnate in the first place? Were the creations in the Dream becoming resistant to Destiny’s narrative and this led to irregularities that caused Skald and Choice to form, leading to Destiny’s death?
There’s a clue about this! It’s a great one. Basically the story-fied version of it has Aion going around asking creations if they wanna do their own thing, and Wolf said YEAH ACTUALLY I DO. And that’s probably the major reason why Skald’s sigil is a wolf.
[Sermon of the Wolf] (30 Rating) Tags: Death, demon, Abyss, Aion, Venandi, Faith of the Pantheon, Destiny
The tome is called ‘Heroes of the Reckoning’, and is primarily a collection of stories of the deeds of heroic figures during that fabled war. The tome was thought lost during the Great Fire centuries ago, but there are occasional fragments still found from surviving copies. One of the most obscure of passages is called ‘The Sermon of the Wolf’."On the eve of battle, one of the paladins approached the great Wolf Queen. ‘Mighty queen, I must ask you: You have come across half the world, across seas of demons and under skies of fire, to fight for a cause that was not yours, to die for a people not your own. Why?’
At this, the great queen smiled, and even a paladin can be forgiven for unease at the smile of the Wolf. ‘Brave paladin,’ she said, 'Let me tell you a story. In the beginning, there were two sisters - a maiden of Dreams, and a maiden of Nightmare. The Dreamer spoke to her sister, and said: Let us create spirits to shape the world. Let us send forth Mountain and Storm, Wind and Fire. And her sister agreed, sending forth the great Primal spirits, who are the bones of the world. Then the Dreamer said to her sister, let us make great beasts of scale and wing, who shall conquer the sky, who shall fly close to us, and look upon what we have made. And her sister agreed, and said, let us make sweet singers, those who live in the deep, who shall know our words and our mind, and spread our song. And the Dreamer agreed. And the two sisters then made a child, mighty Destiny, who would guide all on the Song they had crafted together, and his terrible servant, He Who Waits, who would punish those who transgressed against the song. But you see, brave paladin, the Dreamer was troubled in her heart. She spoke to many of the first children. ‘Mighty Mountain, do you not wish for your own song?’ But the Mountain did not answer. ‘Wind, do you not wish to go where you will?’ But wind spoke not a word. She spoke to the First Children of Now and Always, but they feared it was a test, and would not speak for fear of He Who Waits. Then the Dreamer spoke to my mother, to Wolf. ‘Wolf, do you wish to follow the song?’ ‘No,’ said my mother. ‘I am Wolf. And I would howl my own song.’ And that is how the Dreamer made her choice, paladin. The First Choice, which slew Destiny and cast down his servants. Death was born of his destruction, and her sister would rage and become the enemy of all the world, and the Children of Always would go mad. But we now could choose.
And I choose to fight."
Zircon
- To my understanding, Zircon was basically the “Agent” of Destiny in the primeval world. His +finger quote is very suggestive of his motives, and becoming Herald of Stasis made a lot of sense to me if he was big on Order preservation. But what did he actually do in the primeval world while Destiny was alive? Was he the equivalent of Destiny’s Kindly Voice, which is to say, the director of the metaphorical play that Destiny was writing?
Apparently he did enough for people to be scared of him, lol.
He was Destiny’s SERAPH, I feel like.
- Why did Zircon end up aligned with Stasis after Destiny’s death? Was it because Stasis best aligned with his ethos? I wasn’t really clear why Zircon aligned with anything elysian or abyssal when it’s my understanding he predated both…? Similarly, why was he desc’d as a Rex’alfar and took a Fractal name if he predated all that?
I can answer the last bit at least – Zircon was pretending to be a Rex’alfar. Because his true form would be TOO GLORIOUS FOR PEOPLE TO LOOK UPON.
[Songs of the Path] (30 Rating) Tags: True Songs, Goldenpyre, Lagoma, sirens, Zircon, Stasis, First Flame
The book is incredibly expensive, of course. A collector’s item that the Great Archive was thrilled to obtain, though records of how it came to be in their possession are quite vague.Bound in sharkskin and embroidered with seashells, it always seems to be damp. According to legend, it was written by the hand of a siren, and reading it can lead to madness. Which is ridiculous, of course. It’s pure coincidence that so many scholars who have read it have gone mad - it’s simply a risk inherent in staying indoors and reading all day.
The book has been called many things, but most often ‘Songs of the Path’. It’s written as a journal, describing life below the waves, as one of “those chosen to sing songs of the Path and hold dominion over all the Deep”. It speaks of “our winged cousins, granted dominion over the sky, closest to the gods”, and “He Who Waits, Unto Him was trusted guiding all mortals on the Path”. Abruptly, the journal descends into chaos, describing hundreds of contradictory events, and writing repeatedly “The First Choice was made. Destiny is dead, and He Who Waits will not forgive you.”
In one rambling passage, it mentions, “The First Flame discovered him, following the wisdom of his little god, little Lagoma. Discovered He Who Waits, living among mortals, living among elves. He hid himself, pretended to be one of them, for a mortal gazing upon his true form would go mad, as mad as we are now. He would guide them on the Path, though the Path was Shattered, broken to endless fractal patterns by the First Choice. He would guide them on the Path, though he had become twisted by his slave, the princess of Corruption, and the Path would only end in Stasis. The First Flame chose to challenge dragons, chose to die, before he could be made to Linger. He was wise. He made a Choice. He did not Linger. He could not possibly triumph, so he chose to die. Praise the wisdom of the first pyromancer. The Little Flame chose to be snuffed out! He has escaped to the Wheel, escaped the grip of He Who Waits! Sing of his wisdom!”
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Today on Arxception: Destiny was arguably fated to die.
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So this isn’t a secret but I do briefly want to state.
In my time playing Arx, my character (and myself) developed a theory that primum = potential and magic = story. Essentially beings had potential (primum) and through force of will they enacted their own desires on the dream to gain an outcome (magic). Assuming it was intentional I want to say it’s very clever to make a magical system written in a cooperative RP style game basically run on story. It’s something everyone should be able to understand and it’s just wishywashy enough that you’re not bound to any magical rules lawyering.
That is one of the reasons I thought songs got brought up so much besides being a potential nod to Tolkien with his whole song of creation thing for the genesis of Middle Earth. Songs are the oldest form of storytelling and a bunch of critical information was conveyed via songs or poems and a lot of cool magicky stuff was initiated by songs.
Anyway if it wasn’t intentional than I enjoyed it. If it was intentional than kudos to the staff team for taking that direction.
