@Noraaa said in MU Peeves Thread:

My current MUSH pet peeve is being an ST for a WoD game and trying to come up with horrific contexts and situations, with whatever nightmare scenario that I come up with in my head immediately being outpaced by something happening in RL.

Maybe this is less of a MUSH pet peeve and more of an existential cry for help, though.

In 2020, we had to scrap/put on indefinite hiatus a major plot line on Arx involving a big bad that was looking to unleash a magical plague. Then a few months later we quickly closed out a more minor plot involving city riots.

Those weren’t the only times we’d start some story that was then followed by somewhat similar real world events, to the point that it became a running joke. So if the whole world ends up being devoured by a godkiller demon made entirely of smiling mouths, our bad.

@NotSanni said in Unspeakables: The Politics Thread 2024:

@Kestrel said in Unspeakables: The Politics Thread 2024:

One side is accidentally doing Nazi salutes twice

And the other side suddenly cares now that it’s not their side’s cause du jour doing it

I’m stressed. I’m concerned.

lol “accidentally”

Look, sometimes you just caught up in the moment and invade Poland.

It’s been two days and I’m kinda back to the post election night state of “I don’t know how I’m going to do this” dread. That, and I’m angry. I’m really, really angry. It’s not fun to be in my headspace right now, is what I’m saying.

Anyway, shamelessly stealing this from a Discord channel:

@Arik No idea!

@Solstice said in An Arx Peeve Thread:

@Testament said in An Arx Peeve Thread:

The peeve is that I miss you. It was nice to have a place to go if nothing else to hang out.

Fuck you.

To expand on this peeve, a long commute means that I finally have an excuse to get back into reading for the first time in an embarrassing while (or listening, but whatever), and the first book I picked up was “The Way of Kings”, and now I have such a freaking longing for magical fantasy again.

I miss Arvum, I miss how scary magic felt, I miss Adepts, I miss the people I played with all the time, and I am cursing my total inability to get it together enough to want to try to bother to sandbox.

Popping by the Murder for a drink and a truly questionable stew, or the Training Center and bouncing around and hero-worshipping the folks who were kicking butt, or were brave enough to step into the ring. Miss lurking by the beach on a cold winter’s day, perched on a little rocky outcrop and gazing in the general vicinity of Cardia. Slipping through the darker places between the boroughs into the expansive world between and feasting on a truly unhealthy amount of wine and lemon bars.

Curses, y’all.

Definitely in the same nostalgia boat. I’ve been missing it all year (though given the damn year I had, I’m not at all sure I would have had the energy to actually RP, let alone staff). I’ve got much more time and brain now, and hooo boy I’m going to miss having the outlet/distraction this year.

@KarmaBum said in Your Latest Batch of (Silly) Drama:

Really old drama.

I almost put this in the “Good Things” thread just as an example of things I’m so glad we decided as a group to stop doing.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040204025308/http://southern.silvertree.org/southerngoldapp.cgi

14 general questions, then 33 questions on the gold application and 26 for bronze.

Question 24 on the gold application is amazing.

24. During your first hatching that you’re running as a Junior, you hear on the grapevine that your Weyrleader is flirting with prospective candidates and promising them search and/or impression on acceptance of TS. Your Weyrwoman is his RL wife, and has no idea any of this is going on, and in fact, you know, told him on a number of occasions not to TS. What do you do?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen vaguebooking in the form of an application question before.

@RightMeow said in MU Peeves Thread:

Salutations!

I know for me that I have in life been told I’m too much. If you know me, then you know what I mean. I get very VERY excited when I’m excited about things and I babble in pages or I want to RP. I’m just very excited to write a story with the other person or find out what happens next, etc. I am also very hyper and optimist IRL and it carries over to my paging. So, as someone who has been told that I need to calm down. I take that as a part of my personality to fix. I’ve been told it IRL and MU life. Thus, I don’t always know that line on how much is too much and get stuck in a paralysis pattern. Then in an overthinker pattern. Online is worse because I can’t see the other person’s non-verbal cues. I can’t see if you smiled when you saw me. If you frowned or hesitated, etc. Thus I’m left with words that I have to figure out and probably not well.

Oh, hello, it me (minus the optimism I guess, lol). I’m well aware I’ve got no brakes when I get into a certain level of mood, but there’s being aware I don’t have them and actually finding out where I left them. It means I go off onto long tangents on things everyone else isn’t necessarily remotely interested in, then I realize it and get all anxious over “oh my gosh I wrote like three paragraphs/talked for ten whole minutes on Thing, no one will ever want to interact with me ever again forever”. Which is entirely a me problem to work out, but does mean I’m very, very, very bad about actually asking for RP scenes, because I worry I am being Too Much.

I’ve had some folks be assholes about it in the past, so that certainly hasn’t helped (haha, let me tell you about the time someone backed me into a literal corner to tell me everyone at the guild meet up we were attending was talking about me behind my back), but I’m confident my brain would be making this stuff into a whole deal regardless.

@Rusalka said in MU Peeves Thread:

When your PC has a unique ability that helps out with the current major, year-long plot, this is what’s known as an RP hook. People who have their characters ask yours to use their ability are trying to include you in things.

But, by all means, continue to complain on channel about how nobody wants to play with you (and maybe you’re just a bad writer who should pick another hobby) and are just using your PC for their ability, all the while having said PC sit by themselves, speak in a language most other characters don’t know, and be passive aggressive whenever anyone with IC rank tries to be friendly.

For some reason this gave me the mental image of a fuming Klingon sitting in the shadowy corner of a medieval tavern. I don’t know why Klingon specifically, but Klingon.

@Snackness said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:

My mom doesn’t remember my name. I knew it was coming, but…still sucks.

I lost my dad to this sort of thing this year, it’s awful. I am so, so sorry you (and your mom) are having to deal with it.

Achievement Unlocked

Scattered thoughts.

It’s okay to be tired. I am so, so, so, so, so tired. Thinking about this is just exhausting, and right now I can’t stop. I am so tired of these fucking people, I’m tired of dealing with them, tired of hearing them, tired of them sticking themselves into every aspect of my life, tired of them threatening my friends and my strangers, and I’m tired of being afraid of them.

It feels like nothing matters and nothing has mattered. I’m tired of that too.

I’m tired of 2024 in general, and looking ahead doesn’t offer any break from any of it.

So.

It’s okay to be tired. But what these folks want from us, more than anything, is for us to give up. That’s their victory, and for all that they win, they haven’t won until that happens.

If you’re feeling hopeless, which I am, then I’d like to offer that spite can also be a fine motivator. It’s okay to be tired, it’s okay to rest, and it’s okay to get back up with nothing more than a desire to keep these fuckers from getting that last thing from you.

That sounds like an empty platitude, but it comes from the heart. If you’re in a dark, dark place right now, I want you to know that I am too. There are other people in here with us. Millions. You’re not alone.

Life giveth, life taketh.

It’s taken me a while to post this, but I did share a billion pictures of her, so I figured. We lost my dog back at the beginning of August. She was thirteen, so she had a very good run (and run, and run, and run…), and she’d started getting a bit blind and probably a little deaf, but she was otherwise quite healthy. Then what we thought was a bad UTI turned out to be bladder cancer, and it was pretty clear she already had a partial blockage. Hardest fucking decision I’ve ever had to make, but she went quick and peaceful and on a good day.

There’ll be another dog, hopefully sooner rather than later, maybe even much sooner, but there’ll never be another Riley. She was with me and my family through our hardest times. She was, genuinely, my best friend.

I like to think she’s being a little shit to my brother right now.

@Rinel said in A Constructive Arx Thread:

@RightMeow said in A Constructive Arx Thread:

@Apos

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:

@kalakh

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:

@kalakh

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.