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The Arx Secrets Thread
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@Roz That’s the one, yes. I was told, perhaps incorrectly, that you had to have your primum cleansed and receive the clue in order to be able to learn magic when magic was possible. If that changed towards the end when people could learn magic regardless of whether or not they had their primum cleansed, I missed that info entirely.
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@Rowan I think it’s more likely that you got bad info. Cleansing the primum was about cleansing the primum in Arvum, not in individuals. It may have made people’s primum feel a little better as an additional effect, but it wasn’t related to making individuals prepared to do magic; it was about healing the land.
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@Roz Not sure if there was another kind of cleansing, but for what Rowan might be thinking, if it was bad info, it was certainly going around. I definitely remember a cleansing thing being said to be necessary to do magic and only happened to a person by another person who had it done to them. Which seems to be pretty distinct from just a general cleansing of the land.
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So there was a point when we had planned for it to be one of the steps on the way to learning magic. I know it wasn’t Apostate’s initial plan but when people got into the cleansing rituals, I think it was added to the steps to crossing the threshold thing since it did help PCs define what was important to their character. Technically ‘designing an anima ritual’ was also supposed to be a step before crossing the threshold. Toward the end, though we sort of fast-tracked everything.
ETA: Tehom had added a step by step process to the admin interface but I don’t think that’s going to be implemented exactly to Arx 2.
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I forget the exact terminology, but Ari Corsetina was secretly the human pawn of some great old one. He was saved from the pirates who attacked the ship he served on, and threw him overboard, by a tentacle monster who saved him and then fought on his behalf to give him command of the ship.
The way I interpreted this, and played it, was to say look, Ari’s just a regular guy. He’s a man with a young family, who has to spend long periods away from them to provide for them. He’s a good, loyal guy who sacrifices of himself for others.
He’s not some dashing action hero. I’d say he’s comparable with a guy like Finn in Star Wars. He doesn’t have the special powers, but he’s dragged into all of this, and it tests him.
He eventually gets an inkling that Mirari Corsetina, his daughter, is mixed in with this, that Belladonna Pravus is mixed in with all of this. That everyone he works for, and fights for, and loves and respects, is benefiting from these deep dark powers.
And that power also wants him, and he can feel is watching him with its possibly-malevolent desires, every time he goes out to sea.
What do you do if you’re Ari in this spot? Your wife is dead. Your daughter is all you have left of your old life, and she’s somehow come through everything to a position of influence, comfort, and success. Are you really going to do anything that could possibly take that from her? Of course not.
Or Belladonna. The Pravus family was reaching new heights, and they’ve been very good to you. Are you going to betray them, or undermine them? No!
So what do you do if you’re Ari? You gratefully accept the Knighthood you are given. You quietly watch proudly your daughter do her thing. You serve your lords and ladies.
And when the burden of being watches, and courted, and groomed for some inhuman purpose is too much, you drink.
Mirari’s adopted sister kept stores of wine for trade. Ari frequently broke into those, because it was all he could do.
When he died, he died sacrificing himself at sea, in battle, for family and lords. The beings watching him lashed out when he died, but it was too late. He was at peace, having served those he cared for with all he had.
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Could someone please go through Lucita’s truesong’s The Final Verse and tell me what “Cloak, crystal, sorrowed, shadow’s glee
And old gray fox makes two sides three” and down means! -
@Rhamnious Looks like the Accords from here. Red Wardens, Prismatic Order, Triarchy, Smiling Shadows, and True Lyceum. Two ‘good’ orgs, two ‘bad’ orgs, and one ‘neutral’.
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Alaric’s big secret was already pretty well known by the time I began playing him (he and Brianna had a certain kid named Alarion and the whole reason Carlotta and Sherrod went on the Night’s Grove trip with him was to figure out what to do about it in relative privacy) and if that wasn’t enough, it actually got aired out at the Assembly of Peers by Marcus the one time. (Marcus getting banned from the next AoP for a made-up procedural violation was 100% Alaric retailiating for that, lol.) That said, he did know straight from the drop that neither Alarion nor Alaric III were dead because they didn’t show up in the Shining Lands to yell at him while he was under the Exsilium Noctis, though the latter also wasn’t a secret for too too much longer (lotta other people got visions about that). His other other secret was also not really much of a secret in that he needed soul healing not to go cuckoo for cocoa puffs again, so no offing the NPC Queen since she was the only one around who could do it! (This was also instituted so as not to a) not let the alliance with the Nox backslide since the plot had turned out going this way and b) not touch off the mother of all IC/OOC catfights by having a single PC King in play. I was 100% on board with this.) In a lot of ways Alaric’s real big secret was that the admin staff never expected anyone to get him fixed in the first place, hee.
Ferrando’s secret was that he was a Red Warden from the get go but started play on the outs with Wolbrand (the Red Warden version of the secretly evil NPC placeholder org leader, though Wolbrand wasn’t really capital-E evil just so much as a big jerk who wasn’t very concerned about keeping his operatives alive IIRC) due to a mission gone bad. Said mission involved Ferrando using a one-time-use magic healing widget to save the life of a conwoman captured by the Smiling Shadows after killing the Shadows, instead of leaving her to die and tailing the Shadows back to their hideout like Wolbrand wanted. Said healed conwoman took up a new identity as Selene after recovering, ergo Ferrando got himself hired at the Whisper House to keep an eye on her if the Smiling Shadows went after her again. This plot hook never actually went anywhere since there was never an active Selene before I got Alaric, and after that if I had a scene with Selene it was as Alaric because he kind of took over all my playtime. According to Apos’ AMA this was all tied into the death-of-Genevieve plotline.
I only ever made one OC, Vayne, but I didn’t really find a groove playing him and gave him up to the roster after two months. He was fairly successful as far as donated-roster characters go (he got promoted to Legate!), which was neat to see. Anyhoo his secret was that his reflection in a mirror would occasionally serve as an informant or otherwise give him advice when he was alone.
Strictly speaking I was also the first Jan Kennex but other than getting her initial starting skills set up I barely got out of her @rs period because a few days after I took her up the Alaric apps opened up. Whatever her secret was, later players would have had to set it up.
I also picked up Fairen for the last month (sort of hilarously the only character I ever @org/disafavored as Alaric because of complaints about that one player who could not have a civil IC disagreement with aaaaaanybody to save his friggin life), whose nominal secret was that he was haunted by the ghost of his older sister Hianora, who maintained her control-freaky advice tendencies after death. Though Fairen’s real secret was basically that ex-Metallic Adept and current Seal-keeping-Baalphrigor-snoozing Nickel was hiding out in his basement (which strictly speaking was an extensive network of caverns) back home under the Leaholdt, since House Leary was basically founded primarily to give the surviving remnants of the Nickel Guard the political authority to raise an army and use it to keep Obsidian cultists out of the territory surrounding the caverns and such.
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Anyone know Jasher’s?
I played him for a while a long time ago. If I recall right, he had the blessing of some god/dess or something but I can’t remember the details and I never fully learned the point of it all or what it really meant. Now I’m curious.
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Sabella’s first secret was agreed to be one of the worst on the game by just about anyone who ever heard about it because it didn’t make a lot of sense. It was that she knew the Black Rose Mummers were actually the thieves guild and she wanted to become one of them because she thought they were so cool and something something get them to work for Grayson? This on the surface seemed a somewhat interesting thread, if incredibly unlikey (the cons outweighed the pros like crazy), until you realized that the people running the group also hated all nobility. Like actively sought to bring it down and hated that she was trying to be an actress which made my first month there very, very difficult because it was me trying to scene with people who would inevitably just tell me how stupid I was, how awful Grayson was, how they weren’t ever going to let me into the play actions, and it was a disaster that made me dread RPing. An early thing that I think was dropped was that the Mummers would actively recruit children from the Tragedy to be their informants and get them placed as wards with noble families but if that ever went anywhere I wasn’t apart of it because again, totally stonewalled due to being a princess that was barely tolerated to be hanging around.
Add to that early on at the one Mummers meeting I was ever invited to, Sapphire tried to kill everyone and I ended up being like why would she EVER want to be associated with this group?? Like she never went into the Lowers past the park after that happened because she was traumatized by it.
So her secret was changed to that she saw the good in everyone, which was much cooler and fit the PC far better.
Korka was the reincarnation of Caithness and that was VERY fun to play. She didn’t like what the Whispers became and was always annoyed that she had Caithness at the edge of her mind. Did she become an inquisitor because she wanted to or because stupid Caithness wanted to keep defending the Compact? Delving into that with @Herja was probably the most fun I had on the game.
Gretchen was also a great character who the Leer was in love with or something. He’s send her notes and she’d provide the smiling shadows with poisons. She was a ton of fun to play though with Tessa dying nearly immediately after I picked her up, I was the only active Moore for awhile and it was very isolating. She had an alternate identity: Maggie Moins who ran the black market for rare goods in the Shadow Court and I like to think she didn’t end up dying due to the frost elves that got the other Moores but spent her days making a fortune as Maggie selling her snake oil to the public and magic items on the side, taking all those nobles that looked down on her and her family for all they were worth.
Adora was a smiling shadow. I’m sure that shocks everyone since she was such a nice carpenter. But that org was dead, dead when I was there (if you did a last 20 on the channel it took you to the start or Arx and that was two years in). No one ever talked to me or reached out and I never even knew where the hideout was. She was a ton of fun to play because it was during the age where a bunch of nobles loved being insulted by commoners and she was always game. Also she was great at making stuff so a good creative outlet for crafting. She liked to send people things unasked for and then demand a ludicrous payment. 9 times out of 10 they’d just pay and it was hilarious.
My biggest regret was not having the time for Sabella to convince the other highlords to take power away from the Crown. The assembly of peers was mostly for show where the other Houses could vote, but then Alaric basically did what he wanted regardless. I REALLY wanted to make it so the Crown was just one vote that only counted just as much as the other Houses and would’ve traded the other highlords being okay with Pravus becoming a Great House for it. I even had clues saying that they used to have that sort of power! But then Liara was made highlord and she had zero interest in pursuing that and the Pravus thing exploded. But it was some fun politicking RP while it lasted!
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Lumen had a killer demon tricked into being trapped in the body of a little bunny rabbit. He horribly devoured her enemies.
Lark’s original secret involved being targeted for assassination by the Smiling Shadows. Copper saved her, and she was inducted as a Red Warden recruit. She became a cell leader and much later, the High Warden. Her secondary secret developed through gameplay. She ended up with a talent for deciphering patterns in weaves and identifying their weak points for other Wardens to attack.
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@helvetica Lark being incisive like that is SO GOOD
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@DrQuinn omg, that first Sabella secret sounds SO challenging. A good example of how things that could sound fun can fall apart on contact with players. I’m glad you were able to get in changed eventually.
she/they
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@Tez It seems like later players were able to run with that second secret (I’m sure they were able to uncover more about it than I ever did), so it was definitely a good swap!
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@TNP That was my interpretation as well. I pursued it for a while on him in 2022 the best I could but it ultimately stagnated. I’d love to know the meaning behind it, too!
I could never grow trees
Still I planted my seeds -
Preston’s secret was nice and easy. He was the bastard son of Fawkuhl Valardin, the Dominus of the Faith (legate at the time). His mother was no-one important, but tried to blackmail Fawkuhl using Preston. Fawkuhl had her killed, and presented Preston as an abandoned orphan and took him into the rectory.
Archeron’s was that when he was a ranger with Grayson during his exile, he saw something during the War of the Silence. His fought a guy with a vinewhip, hence his scars, and Archeron managed to kill the man, but was left wounded and the last survivor. While there, lying wounded in the woods, he saw something - or rather didn’t, as there was a hole in his memory. But at night, he had nightmares about that moment and would wake up just before the thing’s face was revealed.
I discovered that he was being hunted by Fade, which is why he generally avoided the woods after that. He ultimately got Fade off his back by making a pragmatic deal with the Abyssal lot. And at the end of the game, Archeron gathered the Tydes and weathered out the second reckoning with his cousin Reveka, using a blood candle she sent him for his wedding to summon her.
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@Omen Yeah, from having RPed with several Jashers over the years, I’m pretty confident that he was godtouched by Mangata, but I don’t know if there were more details.
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@Snackness said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
ETA: @Narson NOT DEAD!
Just abandoning Preston for /years/ without writing then. Harumph.
I did almost do another journal entry to Esoka and Thena before the end.
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@Evilgrayson said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@Rhamnious Looks like the Accords from here. Red Wardens, Prismatic Order, Triarchy, Smiling Shadows, and True Lyceum. Two ‘good’ orgs, two ‘bad’ orgs, and one ‘neutral’.
It’s this, yeah.
It occurs to me I can break open those songs now, so I think I’ll do that. Hi! I wrote Lucita’s last three True Songs (they were all action results), which ended up being some combination of riddles of current events, and vague predictions of future ones. The upside and downside of Arx’s setting was that destiny and fate were, canonically, not a thing, so any prophecies amounted to very shaky versions of Christmas Yet to Come, an ‘if events continue as they are now’ sort of thing, but even more precarious. This meant GMs weren’t constrained to following them, but it also meant players might be kinda disappointed if predicted events didn’t happen. I tried to be very, very vague with anything that wasn’t just a version of ‘this is happening right now’, even if I had a good sense of where a plot was going, so that it might be interpreted however which way. I’m not sure I was very successful at that, but that was the intent.
I really loved writing Arx clues, and I really, really liked seeing folks run with these, so I hope they ended up being entertaining at the least.
They’re really long, so I’m going to break up the songs into individual posts and not post them all at once.
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@Tez said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
A good example of how things that could sound fun can fall apart on contact with players.
I’m curious to hear more secrets that just Didn’t Work, for reasons that weren’t just like “oh well everyone involved idled out years ago.” I remember a few people vaguely griping about them in the old Arx thread on MSB back in the day and would find it really interesting to hear the full details about what made them so challenging when it came to actual play versus the intent when they were written.
