@GF said in Macha Awareness (And Unappreciation) thread:
@Wizz It’s not a gif but I first thought of this.
This reminded me I made one specific to Ghost at one point.
@GF said in Macha Awareness (And Unappreciation) thread:
@Wizz It’s not a gif but I first thought of this.
This reminded me I made one specific to Ghost at one point.
I typed up a whole reply to that thread about how to repair the community, as measured as I could manage, looked it over, and then promptly trashed it, just to get it out of my system. It’s a bit cathartic, if time wasting. I was never going to post it, because in all honesty what would be the point?
The OP is the most sealion of sealions, and I have never witnessed him engage in a conversation in good faith. That post is no different. It is a topic worth discussing, but there’s no interest from the people asking the questions in hearing answers contrary to “just keep doing what you’re doing”, in that or any other thread. The solution offered by the OP to the perceived problem is to just do the exact same thing, but to the “right” people (or, excuse me, “cull them”, that’s a fucking yikes, my dude, it can go on the shelf alongside all the other yikes gathered by that equivalence between bullies and genuine predators).
In general, nothing I’ve seen since this whole thing shook out has given me any confidence that MSB can achieve what it claims it wants, in part because I do not believe that is actually what the administration there wants, as evidenced by…basically every response to substantial criticism or pushback, but also by their blatant lying.
Actually, y’all lurking here anyway, here’s the version where I’m too tired to care about moderating myself. You’re lying. You’re lying out your lying lie holes, and anyone who goes and reads the relevant posts/threads can see it. The bans had nothing to do with the Hog Pit. The issues that sparked the firestorm that led to the bannings had nothing to do with the Hog Pit. Most of the people banned were banned over what was effectively a cease and desist as regards posting at all, not because they were super toxic baby-eating ultra bullies subsisting on the tears of the undeserving. And I note that basically everyone spreading this lie is someone who enthusiastically engaged in the Hog Pit. Yes, that means you, and you, and you. All people have to do is look at your posting history. I guess you’re just banking on folks not doing that, but here’s the thing, here’s the big glaring fifty foot neon flashing sign of Painfully Obvious Projection:
If you meant what you keep saying, you would not be lying about what happened and why. There is literally no reason for it other than you’re looking for easy excuses and convenient scapegoats. You banned a bunch of people and declared it good, so why, exactly, do you feel the need to make up reasons to further justify it? The reasons are right there! Anyone can read it! You’re clattering on about bringing the receipts while posting on a forum chock-full of them.
The way you’re behaving toward anyone offering any substantial criticism is fucking absurd (do forgive me, I used the bad no-no word). You’re aggressive as all hell straight out the gate, and when posters get fed up with that behavior and start caring less about trying to engage with you in good faith (as you offer absolutely none), you take it as proof you were right to be paranoid assholes. MSB cannot and will not get past this until you’re willing to actually check yourselves, but as checking yourselves seems to be a nigh herculean task, I doubt you’re up to it.
But that’s okay. You’ve got your little corner of the internet, and you’re welcome to it, and whatever enjoyment you get from it. You don’t actually have to pretend that you want to do better. I imagine most people would prefer you not, in fact. But if you do? Then you need to put in serious effort to fix your shit. And you’re going to have to reckon with the fact that there are people you are supporting and allowing into your corner that have no interest in changing and thrive off of the kind of environment you’re providing, By that, I don’t mean the pretense toward civility or tightened standards on what’s acceptable to post, I mean the absolute sub-zero chilling effect your actual behavior has had on the likelihood of anyone not in your immediate in-group calling out or reporting them.
At the end of the day, it comes down to staff. Do you trust staff to handle this sort of thing fair and reasonably? Then trust that they’re seeing things you aren’t; additional testimony, logs, personal experience, interaction with the accused, etc etc. This is not me saying that staff trying their best don’t still make the wrong call at times, or that their rulings should be taken as the end all be all in all circumstances, but when you boil everything else away, that’s what it’s about.
If you can’t or don’t or won’t trust staff with this kind of thing, then I don’t think it’s likely to help if staff air all the dirty laundry out for everyone to pick over. Everyone is not staff. These are not things decided by popular vote (at least, in every game I’ve ever heard of, they’re not). And it also discourages people who would report abuse but are afraid or embarrassed to have it made public. It’s very hard for a lot of players to reveal it even in private to staff they do trust, it’s often a struggle to convince folks (or convince yourself) to go to staff with issues like this. Every. Single. Time. that we have banned people from Arx during my tenure as staff, someone, and usually more than one, will immediately pipe up to say it was happening to them too, or they were getting strange vibes that they didn’t quite think was worth reporting. It is extremely rare for these folks to target only one person. Even when we pre-emptively banned someone, a bunch of folks talked about how they were already seeing red flags from him.
In this case, from my understanding, the person being accused is staff, and the person who could do something about it refuses to do so. This post is, therefore, a warning to the community, because that’s about the only thing that can be done to try to keep other folks from being victimized.
Do people make posts like this out of malice? Absolutely, I’ve seen it happen. But that’s rare, and the truth tends to out, because the sorts of folks who make up that kind of shit are also usually not targeting just one person.
This idea that someone needs a full court jury of their peers to determine whether they are, in fact, a sexpest/manipulative asshole/general piece of shit is silly. That can’t and will never happen. We aren’t calling witnesses to the stand or doing internet fingerprinting or whatever, there aren’t cops waiting to haul the guilty away or a singular judge with the power and authority to send you to internet jail. All that does is serve to protect abusers with layers of obstacles that victims have to hop through and the insistence that private things be dragged into the public for hobby randos to pick over. This is why demanding receipts in this fashion just doesn’t work. What counts as receipts? What counts as receipts that can’t just be waved off as not good enough?
It sounds like staff can’t be trusted on this game, and at least one is actively causing harm. That’s the point I’d say you’re best off leaving the game, but that’s a lot easier said than done. We get attached to games, to stories, to people. But it’s worth knowing that one can expect no help in this regard, and worth the victims being able to find support and assurance that they are not simply blowing things out of proportion.
I’m going to make this as short as I can. At one point this player commonly went by “Jay”. I know he played on Lion King MUCK a long long while back. He spent years playing on GarouMUSH, bounced to City of Hope after ragequitting, then eventually came back to GarouMUSH, much to the detriment of all, claiming he’d turned over a new leaf. No. Once he was genuinely banned from GarouMUSH, he apparently went back to City of Hope for a while, until he was banned there. Eventually he made it to Arx, and once we knew it was him, we banned him there too. Here’s why:
He’s a fucking sexual predator. I’m not going to mince words here. He preyed knowingly on underaged players, abusing the trust of already vulnerable children, hounding them for TS, personal contact information, nudes, and worse. He stalked them across games when they tried to break off contact, repeatedly lying about his identity to try to get close again. At least once, he stalked someone in real life across the country (this person was thankfully(?) not underage). He did this to several friends of mine, and I can only guess in horror at how many fucking others. He should be in jail. As he’s not in jail, he should be chased from this hobby and from any hobby for the rest of time.
This is why he was banned from Arx, and this is why I’m making this thread.
Going any further feels inconsequential, because given the above it doesn’t matter what kind of a player he is, but since we’re here already, I might as well. He’s a toxic asshole, and he will always eventually out himself as one because while he’s capable of masking or muting his behavior for a little while, he’s entirely incapable of changing it. He cannot keep IC and OOC separate. He will metagame as much as he can get away with. He will (shock of shocks) abuse the trust of other players to get what he wants. He will abuse any power he’s given, IC or OOC. He will be verbally abusive to players where he thinks people won’t report him for it. He’ll lie. He’ll shittalk people behind their backs, then turn around and shittalk the people he was just shittalking to. He’ll attempt to manipulate people he’s abusing into not reporting him, both by trying to convince them it’s not a big deal, and that staff can’t be trusted and might punish them. He’s pushy as fuck about TS, and possessive as hell. He misgendered people on purpose. He throws tantrums when not given as much attention as he feels he deserves. And so on. Name a toxic behavior to be found in this hobby, and he probably engages in it.
He’s had tons of characters and been on tons of games, I can only provide these:
GarouMUSH: Jeremy, Brom, Briari, Alecia, others I know I’m forgetting
From his City of Hope banning post: Brigette, Danielle, Diana, Izayah, Logan, Sonya, Troy, Justin, Andrea, Fogwalker
Arx (obviously): ex-Breccan (sorry any future Breccans)
Fuck you, Jay. You’ve hurt far too many people, I can only hope this helps prevent you hurting more. If any game runner/staffer wants help with identifying him on their game, they can DM me.
derp, this thread’s anger summed up in two words:
we are not a community.
We were.
Shit, I can’t imagine why this person got banned after only three days on the game, it’s a mystery someone help me out.
So, I have this dog.
She has opinions.
And she is ridiculous.
She was very smol. Mother and laptop available for size comparison.
She had a truly enormous family. 13-14 puppies, something insane like that, and she was the clear runt. Her brothers liked to pull her around by the tail and it was very rude. Her owner lived a number of hours away, so at first all we had were videos to pick from. There was one for each pup, but this little monster kept photo-bombing, bouncing around for attention and generally making a nuisance of herself. She was the last of the litter to be chosen, possibly because she was a headstrong little shit far, far, far too smart for her own good.
She is now 12-ish and has life threatening seizures, so there’s no knowing how much longer she’ll be around, but no one has properly informed her that she’s an old lady now.
It’s also really hot, so she’s shedding madly.
To add: People coming to a conclusion or general agreement on a singular issue (or even multiple issues) is not an echo chamber, just like people who are good friends are not a clique. Context matters, and in that regard, there are forum regulars disagreeing in this very thread.
Oh yeah, bouncing onto a thread to go WOW YOU ALL SUCK LOL is also not an argument that deserves fair consideration. Like what goofy ass logic is that? You want to debate something, maybe try providing something to actually discuss. Something less boring than “but what if bitches be lyin’ tho.”
The thing about microaggressions like that example is that they are rarely, if ever, isolated. People who do that tend to either target more than one person, or escalate their behavior toward the person they’re already targeting (if they haven’t already). It’s good to know as staff because there are players that are extraordinarily good about not quite doing any one thing enough to get banned, but that, when you can have a look at their range of behaviors, it becomes clear they really should be.
And lest people think I am a hypocrite that is upset because I got banned yet as staff of a game, I am not shy about using my own banhammer:
I’m not here because I am horrified about Ganymede having gone on a banning rampage (except when she banned @farfalla because Macha was being manipulative, that was super fucked up). I am not upset over being banned and I completely deserved mine. You do not call people clowns living in clown town and not expect to very soon lose access.
I am here because I think Derp and his current team are bad for the hobby. Victim shaming and whatever authoritarian power grab happened over there are some of the WORST aspects of this hobby and watching this happen in real time after hearing about it happening on various games is wild. I’m not mad over the bans. I’m mad that the worst the hobby has to offer has been given a safe space to continue to spread toxicity and ‘hide’ from the well-deserved consequences of their fucked up actions. (Looking right at you, Hella)
I, on the other hand, am mad about the bans. Less that they happened, as that was shitty and enough reason that Gany should not be admin anymore, but I recognize it was heat of the moment panic and anger, and more because they were upheld. There was a lot of noise about mistakes being made, accepting responsibility, etc, etc, but barely even a token effort, if that, to do anything to rectify the situation.
Hot take, every single ban should have been reversed. Yes, every single damn one, even the ones that probably deserved it, even the ones that asked for it. Even Tempest, who should have caught a ban fucking years ago. That situation was sparked by two abysmally bad decisions, and spiraled out of control entirely because Gany refused to listen to anyone and then panicked. Did some people deserve to get banned from how they responded to that? Probably. Don’t care. If you say it’s on your head, then it’s on your head, and taking responsibility means accepting that you actually did do something wrong, which means you should make an effort to right said wrong, or at the very least mitigate the fallout from your actions.
It’s actually worse that a handful of bans were reversed instead of all of them, because they were so few, and so unevenly decided, that it’s blatantly obvious this was used, after the fact, to scoot a bunch of people off the site they (particularly derp) didn’t like. Going on and on and on about The Clique only proves this is the case, because none of the bans handed down were because of that. There wasn’t some weird sweep of the userbase that determined whether or not someone was too mean girl for a non-Hogpit MSB, that wasn’t why the bans happened. It was pure opportunism. It annoys me that they’re constantly misrepresenting it, but I guess it’s a bit awkward to claim you’re the voice of the community and against people being mean and exclusive when you’ve just conducted an after-the-fact purge of people you don’t like.
In any case, I figured I was probably leaving once I woke up and saw all of that (I said as much over there), but my final decision came when I realized just how fucking unpleasant and unwelcoming it was going to be - and was already becoming - for anyone remotely friendly with anyone who was gone, for (ironically) anyone not in their new in-group, and for anyone who was going to be critical of decisions made in the past or going forward. People were already violating the new rules in order to tell people they weren’t wanted, and to shut up and gtfo, so I did indeed shut up and gtfo. No regrets on that. It’s so fucking joyless over there now.
Belittling rape, misogyny etc., doesn’t make you look like less of a misogynist, Devrex. If it hurts you that people would say this about you, then stop fucking doing it.
I called Cullen a rapist because he is a rapist. Like, I would love to share his criminal record with you, I have it right here, but it’s against the rules.
And I feel compelled to drive this point not to be hyperbolic, but because that fact has been questioned incessantly, here:
And because the undertones of MSB’s discussion, prior to me posting there to make that point explicit, very much were of the fear-mongering suspicion that Hog Pit threads might contain false accusations, and that receipts are necessary, and oh no, what if all these poor innocent souls have been damned because you all didn’t do your due diligence. These points were made in particular by Ghost, and upvoted by you, and Derp, and the rest of your sealioning fanclub.
Which by the way, I think is despicable, and dangerous. And not despicable in the sense of, ‘Oh I don’t quite like the theme of this game, perhaps I should play on a different game instead; each to their own.’ But in the sense that makes me feel compelled to say something about it because people could get hurt, have been hurt, and are hurt, by the delegitimisation of their trauma and the benefit of the doubt you wish to confer to predators with multiple accusers. Such as Rysen too, for example, which is why I assume people other than me felt the need to rebutt the comments about him, too. These are not assumptions; this has been made explicit.
By the way, Ghost, still paying attention? This is why I do not accept your apology, why I doubt your intentions, and why I bring up the fact that you’ve always done this, dating back years ago and are still doing it right now.
So don’t act like you’ve always been an ally or that it’s disingenuous of me to bring him up.
My sincere apologies to simplications for getting them mixed up in the crossfire; on the other hand, Cullen is a crypto-fascist, as is ppurg, the other dude I’ve been known to harp on in the general MU* community about being a fascist, and your mockery of my willingness to call people out on that certainly makes you look like someone who’s either in their camp or tolerant of it. Which is further backed by this thread of yours from three years ago, which was directed at me. And it’s relevant to bring that history up because you’re still doing it. The only “apology” for it you’ve offered was coupled by an untrue accusation, simply another of your classic attempts at DARVO. The aim of that was not to apologise, but to justify.
P.S.: Thanks for successfully getting the person who posted the exact account you referenced in your reddit comment, the one about him threatening to send nudes to her boss and stalking her on social media, to delete her testimony. Your actions have material consequences, and it is not hyperbolic to say so, nor to react to them.
This actually inspired me to go grab something I remembered from the Arx Thread when Breccan was banned.
I mean, I get it, irrefutable evidence is a big claim, and this is the guy who argued you can’t hear things over the internet, but this is where he went first, in the middle of a dozen people who actually played on Arx remarking about the dude setting off creep meters. Other folks expressed interest in the details, because that’s natural, but derp’s the only one who immediately went to ‘but what if it’s fake’ about a banning on a game he doesn’t play and a situation he knew nothing about.
At best, it’s some weird and incredibly tone-deaf semantics argument in the middle of a bunch of people going “yeah, dude was sketch”. But it didn’t give me much confidence toward his ability to appropriately handle these situations. Dude doesn’t think about the effect of the shit that comes out of his mouth.
@Rinel said in A Constructive Arx Thread:
@RightMeow said in A Constructive Arx Thread:
Welcome to Night— Arx. Welcome to Arx.
I feel you should do this now.
The City Council announces the uncovering of a new Labyrinth at the corner of Crown Way and Visitor Road, beneath the Archive. They would like to remind everyone that books are not allowed in the Labyrinth. People are not allowed in the Labyrinth.
It is possible you will see Hungry Figures in the Labyrinth.
Do not approach them. Do not approach the Labyrinth.
The door is warded and highly dangerous. Try not to look at the Labyrinth, and especially do not look for any period of time at the Hungry Figures. The Labyrinth will not harm you.
Someone found their way into the Labyrinth because Kalakh accidentally wiped the traverse locks again.
They met the Hungry Figures.
They did not survive.
Everything is fine now.
@Smile said in MU Peeves Thread:
Honestly, my biggest peeve is people who make decisions that get their characters in danger and rather than go along with it, they sort of like get frustrated at the consequences they get because “what else was my character going to do? Of course they were going to rage at the super evil and powerful mage! They are a rebel!”
Like the character isn’t real. You make the decisions. Own it.
I…why would you play a rebel character without expecting consequences. Isn’t that kind of the point of playing a rebel? If nothing happens and everyone agrees with you, you’re not rebelling!
This is a rhetorical question obviously, I absolutely know why, it just endlessly baffles me.
@Rinel said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@Roz said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Death definitely does not act human. She’s a mad goddess.
Maybe I should have just said “more obviously active in the world.” Dance of Skulls, etc.
Granted, that was one time, but it was a pretty big deal
You do one zombie apocalypse…
@Rinel said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Was Azazel always capable of Devouring things as powerful as gods and their reflections, or did he get supercharged by it?
I’m assuming the reason he didn’t go after any of the gods originally was because it would negatively affect their reflections.
You mentioned Skald needing to merge with Vellichor as a result of Fable being consumed; were any of the other gods affected by Azazel’s unholy buffet?
He got supercharged but I’m definitely not the person to explain what happened there. Legion and Fable were the only Reflections that got et, so it was mostly Skald handing Vellichor a bunch of new responsibilities and going lmao bye.
If the final battle had gone worse though, the follow up last chance scene would have basically been Azazel doing a god/archfiend chomping speedrun while the PCs tried to stop him.
Finally, were Death and Skald unusually anthropomorphic for gods, or was it just that we (I?) saw more of a human side to them due to their relatively outsized influence in the founding of Arx?
Definitely more anthropomorphic than the other gods, for several reasons. Skald in particular took a pretty active hand in doing shit, then ended up stuck in the physical world because he used a bunch of his power to bind Legion, and leaving would have released it again.
Also he apparently thinks Elysia is lame in comparison now.
Oh, also, Legion, Fable, and Ruin were the big three that Azazel consumed, but he actually ate a fuckload of lesser-but-still-powerful horrors up north, which I suppose is good news for when the Arvani start pushing back up that way.
Afaik, that didn’t include the Maw of the Blizzard though.
@Quibbler said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
I had a Megalomanic goal to get the Oracle’s crown. Gianna had some link to the sirens I think, which I am very curious about (@clue 2227). Mostly when I brought it up the response was NOPE you’re gonna DIE so I eventually stopped pursuing it. I always wondered, though.
There was also the thirteenth crow dream (3033), which made Gianna decide she wasn’t going to tie herself to team good guy or team bad guy but instead try to… bridge between them.
As previously mentioned I’m definitely not the expert on Oracle (or Copper), but I think the ‘crown’ was metaphorical, like it wasn’t an actual object or anything, think of it like the way people use someone having the mantle of something. Oracle taught/bestowed Copper the ability to use time magic, which was otherwise unique among mortals (and now immortals). I remember someone sending Watcher a messenger asking after the crown, and her response was that she had no idea what that was really referring to, but that any power over time vanished from the Dream when Copper did.
Watcher did not know this firsthand, but she wholeheartedly trusted the person who told her both in that she would definitely know, and that she had no reason to lie about it.
So blah blah blah it isn’t possible for anyone else to learn time magic, at least in Arx 1’s setting.
@Roz said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Re: Prism: Prism had a bit of her own thing going apart from Skald, but when Skald stepped down from godhood he granted a share of the power he retained to her, so she’s still got power, but yeah afaik she’s no longer a Seraph.
Prism actually decided not to accept that power. She and Skald are instead living as a comparatively normal, undivine couple instead. It’s very sweet.
I assume she still has magical ability, because she had also been a mage, but she’s no longer divine.
Aww.
@Wizz said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
His gambit to become a god was more or less “I am actually the biggest deal, bam Destiny is alive again and does what I want”, which is insane, but is also how magic works.
…so the real key all along to winning Arx actually was to cultivate, in MU*ing terms, serious Main Character Syndrome?
jk, jk
lol basically.
@dvoraen said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
… I’m not sure Oracle was ever an entity the playerbase really knew about, but that’s a different topic.
In very short (because I don’t really know much more than very short), Oracle was the one Siren who managed not to go completely insane. She can see through time’s possibilities without giving in to madness or despair. She stole time magic from He Who Waits and gave it to Copper, which is why Copper is/was the only person who was ever able to use it.
A clue!
My children, you must not speak too harshly of those who are not of the Blood. True, they lack the wisdom and strength of the Primordia that flows from mother to daughter, but they are capable of many great things. Attend me, children.
Once, long ago, the twin sisters of Dream and Nightmare created all that is, was, and ever shall be. Nightmare was satisfied, for her stories whispered into every heart, but Dream was troubled, for the peoples of the world were not truly free. It was mighty Wolf who counseled Dream on what she must do, and Destiny itself was slain.
Every child learns of the power of songs. All children are forbidden from heeding the songs of the Deep, for you know that they ring with madness and doom. They were not always thus, for the sweet singers were driven mad by the death of Destiny, and their songs splintered a thousand thousand times with visions of what Never Was and what Never Should Be. But not all, for one alone kept her mind.
We call her Oracle, for she sees all. The greatest servant of Destiny visited her. He lamented, “Sweet Oracle, have you seen what they have done to my father?” She did not weep for Destiny, but Oracle was as clever as He Who Waits was terrible, and echoed the woe of her sisters for him. “You must sing to your sisters and prepare them. They must silence the songs of Wolf, who sings to Destiny in his sleep, and I will travel to a day before the First Choice, to undo the choice that has been made. The First Choice will never be, Destiny will live again, and all will once again be set right upon the Path.”
At this, Oracle was sore afraid, for she knew that he could do such a thing. But Oracle was very clever, and saw what she must do. She went to the very dawn of days, when the sisters were crafting the world. She saw the birth of Destiny and his terrible servants, and saw when the sisters gave gifts to all their children. She saw herself and her sisters as they were given the crown of Songs, that they might sing of all that would always be. She saw her cousins of the sky, as they were given wings, and a crown of Breath through which they could speak of what Now should be. She stole one of the crowns that was to be given to He Who Waits, the crown of Time. She left a small thing in its place, so that he would not know what had been stolen, and traveled far away.
She walked for a long time, looking for what she knew she must find, walking through many tomorrows, many of which were tomorrows from yesterdays we have never known. And finally she found her, a girl with Copper hair, and knew it must be her. “You see as I see, Child of Skald. You see the world not as it is, nor as it was, but as it should be. And so I give this crown to you, so that it must always be so.” And so this Child of Skald would guard all our yesterdays, and ensure that tomorrow would always come.
With respect to Orichalcum, how was he even able to try to resurrect Destiny in the first place? Was he really just that significant to the Dream and it’s as simple as that?
Orichalcum fucked about with magic that already existed and basically turned it on its head. Since Wolf set Destiny’s death in motion, she also took measures to ensure Destiny would stay dead, in the form of the first howl, a song which she later taught her children, the Venandi.
The Wolf Queen one of the previous posted clues mentions was Raksha’hasa, the first Venandi. Orichalcum murdered her, and stole the knowledge of Wolf’s song. He then figured out how to completely twist it, so that instead of keeping Destiny dead, it would bring him back, and he forced the enslaved Mor’ral to sing it over and over again while killing all the Venandi so that 1. they couldn’t counter-spell it, and 2. no one would know the original, un-corrupted song.
There’s a lot of clues about it, but I wrote the majority of them and I don’t want to flood the thread with my lengthy nonsense (well, THAT lengthy nonsense).
Most relevant clue (that I didn’t write!):
"I was too young to fight, but not so young that I knew the fighting was not going well. When the battle was lost, I was told to run, and I know now that I was the only one to escape. His voice called to them, called them all back, and your kind has never helped us. No help would be coming - you made that clear enough in the war, turning on us when we tried to ally. My family was gone. All of them, now enslaved to the master of chains. But that’s not the worst part. The part that scares me, and should scare you, scholar, was the howls.
I see your confusion. You don’t know that howls are songs, do you? You don’t know the story of Death and the Wolf? Well, let me tell you. A long, long time ago, we were all bound by the chains of Destiny. Wolf made a choice, and the Dreamer did too, and Destiny died. Death was born of that. Death came to us first, but not in the way you think. She came to thank our mother, and to warn her. She pointed to the moon, the same moon you see above us, scholar. In those days it was there every night, not just some of the time. And it was trying to wake up. You don’t believe me, I can tell. But it was. She told our mother that it was the skull of mighty Destiny, and that he was sleeping. We had to sing to it, to give it dreams that it must never wake, that it never again dictate where our paths must lead. So Wolf and her children would forever sing to the moon, howling our song night after night, singing Destiny to sleep, keeping our choices to be our own.
The Horned God took my brothers and sisters, and he has changed their song, scholar. I’ve heard it once, and my blood runs cold. They sing a different song to him now. Have you never heard howls that frighten you?
You may not know the words in their howl. You could never know. But somewhere, deep down, you know the meaning. They sing to the sleeping god, hoping to infect his dreams with chains and bindings, hoping to guide us on a path from which there will be no escape. They sing most loudly when the moon is over Farhaven, the tomb of their master.
My brothers are sisters are gripped in madness now, their minds bound in chains, their voices now a single voice that belongs to an evil you cannot fathom. And they sing with a single voice, a single purpose.
They sing for him to rise."
One thing about magic I’ve wondered is whether Writs had some relevance to Destiny, in that Writs “preordained”/enforced your actions; you weren’t able to do anything the Writ proscribed. That is to say, what type of magic is a Writ, exactly, since they seemed to be unaligned (i.e., could be elysian, primal and/or abyssal in nature)? Where I’m going with this is that I’ve been curious whether or not traces of “destiny magic” existed in the world in some form. The moon was Destiny’s skull, so Destiny was kind of still there, and He Who Waits presumably didn’t have a fundamental change in existence when Destiny died, much like Prism didn’t seem to over what happened with Skald, so I feel like there was more to the story about what Destiny dying really means if Destiny could be resurrected in the first place.
Needless to say, I find Destiny and now Zircon fascinating. >.>
Also, hypothetical food for thought, but imagine if Death or the Wheel somehow reincarnated Destiny as with Calithex killing Baalphrigor, per Apostate’s AMA. Zircon’s reaction would be priceless… and probably very Concerning.
There were traces of Destiny magic, though that’s not really anything I personally messed with, so I can’t really answer any questions about it. Writs, though, originated from Legion, as they couldn’t pre-ordain stuff, but they absolutely 100% removed someone’s ability to choose to do anything otherwise. They were also extremely hard to break, which is why they ended up being used so often by so many different actors. This is how the Horned God managed to deliberately tangle himself up in all of them to the point that he couldn’t actually be killed unless the actual concept of a writ was removed, thus breaking every single one of them. He could have been imprisoned…at the cost of every soul he’d threaded himself through being enslaved and kept from the Wheel forever.
Re: Prism: Prism had a bit of her own thing going apart from Skald, but when Skald stepped down from godhood he granted a share of the power he retained to her, so she’s still got power, but yeah afaik she’s no longer a Seraph.
He Who Waits became the Herald of an Archfiend though, it was a bit of a demotion and he’s been making it everyone else’s problem ever since. Terrible coworker.
As another aside, this is also why the Horned God basically went out of his way to be the Worst. He was a terrible dude to start with, but pissing off the entire world wasn’t accidental. The reason he kept having Daughters and sacrificing them was because it would make him more and more powerful, and the reason it made him more and more powerful is because it increased his importance in the story. By breaking the Unbreakable Laws over and over and over again, and not only that but setting it up so he could keep doing so, he kept building himself up to the Dream as a Big Deal. Making tons and tons of enemies, some of whom devoting their entire lives to destroying him? An even Bigger Deal. His gambit to become a god was more or less “I am actually the biggest deal, bam Destiny is alive again and does what I want”, which is insane, but is also how magic works.
On the other hand, however, righteous revenge is also a very tempting story. You’re a bigger deal to the Dream if your forever nemesis is the guy trying to make himself a god, rather than that asshole neighbor dumping leaves in your yard. So he was also empowering all of his worst enemies in the process, and taking a massive gamble that he would be able to ride that danger tsunami long enough and high enough to succeed.
Edit: Gonna also note that the final Bad that nearly destroyed all of reality itself was known as the Eater of Stories.