Brand MU Day

kalakh

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.

kalakh

@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.

kalakh

Achievement Unlocked

kalakh

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kalakh

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.

kalakh

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.

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

kalakh

@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.

kalakh

@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.

kalakh

@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…

kalakh

@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.

kalakh

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.

kalakh

@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.

kalakh

@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.

kalakh

@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.

kalakh

@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!

[Yesterday and Tomorrow: A Khati Bedtime Story] (35 Rating) Tags: copper, Zircon, Destiny, Nefer’khat
A book in the Great Archive that purports to collect stories from other cultures has what appears to be the transcription of a bedtime story to children in the fabled land of Nefer’khat:

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!):

[Howling at the Moon] (30 Rating) Tags: The Horned God, Venandi, Destiny, Mor’ral
The Elven War was a cataclysmic event through which humanity only barely survived, but the Scholars of Vellichor did not forget their mandate. Even after the Great Archive burned, they continued to fulfill their duty of gathering and curating knowledge, writing and storing all that they could. Many of the records of the grim reality of life after the devastation of war have since been lost to obscurity, as the victors were in no rush to remember all they had endured. However, sometimes rare bits of useful information can be found in even the most dry of sources, and such it is with “A Study on the Effects of the War Upon the Abandoned”, which largely consists of a small team of scholars who sought out and interviewed any shavs who would speak to them. One chapter was dedicated to shav tribes that had nearly been obliterated in the war, and one section was designated “Last of the Mor’ral”.

"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.

kalakh

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.

kalakh

This relates back to Destiny, even. Under Destiny, there was one song, which the Sirens sang. Future was predetermined, everyone had their role, and time more or less had no meaning because no one could change their role and all of the First Children were totally immortal, as Death didn’t exist. He Who Waits was basically there to be Destiny’s enforcer, and was scary enough that dragons were worried about crossing him. As an aside, another clue talks about him planning for time magic shenanigans to put everything back the way it was after Destiny died, but that power was stolen from him by Oracle before he actually got it. I’m not sure Oracle was ever an entity the playerbase really knew about, but that’s a different topic.

Aion and Tehom are the Dream and the Nightmare, basically reality, and the way you work magic is by effectively convincing reality to do what you want it to do, and you’re more persuasive if you’ve got higher potential (aka primum) because you’ve got a greater ability to influence the story. If you want to look at it that way, what Wolf did was basically convince reality to change a fundamental concept of the world and it broke everything, with the very incarnation of “fuck you, I do what I want” choke slamming Destiny out of existence and causing the domino effect of…basically everything else.

As far as I know the Kindly Voices weren’t really a thing during Destiny’s reign. They enforce the Unbreakable Laws of the Dream, which are only unbreakable in that you sure as shit shouldn’t break them, so that requires the choice to break them anyway. I could be wrong on that, though, but either way the Kindly Voices are a sort of…separate unto themselves thing that exist for that singular purpose.

Anyway, by all means, absolutely keep asking about lore secrets.

kalakh

@dvoraen Correct.

Oblivion magic does fun things like completely obliterate souls, which makes Death zombie apocalypse levels of angry.

kalakh

RE: events leading to the Dance of Skulls, Primeria walking into the Abyss, followed by the other original Fractals, gave the elves enough power to fight off the dragons, at the expense of occasionally unleashing demons and the experience slowly (or, in the case of Obsidian, not so slowly) driving a number of them mad. Not all of the elves were particularly thrilled with this, such as Calithex, Platinum, Silver, Symonesse, etc. but for a while being an abyssal mage was just kind of a thing, and there were more fractals created. Best of intentions, etc.

Eventually Primeria decided it would be extremely cool if elves could be immortal like the First Children; you can extend your lifespan with magic, but dragons, etc, will just live forever unless they’re killed, and she also thought it would be pretty cool if Death just got cut out of the affair completely. Death’s priests did not, in fact, think this was cool, and extra didn’t think it was cool to sacrifice an insane amount of human souls to Oblivion to manage it. Calithex was/is Death’s Herald, so he was at the forefront of what turned into a rebellion/civil war against his older siblings. Primeria decided to put the rebellion down by sacrificing an absolutely unfathomable number of human souls to Oblivion in order to poof them all out of existence, but Diamond convinced her to lower that to a slightly less unfathomable number of human souls to permanently curse the sun against them instead. The rebels became the Nox’alfar, unable to survive in sunlight, and Death lost her absolute shit at so many souls getting Oblivion’d, kicking off the Dance of Skulls, aka Good Job, Primeria, Enjoy Your Zombie Apocalypse.

Lots of stuff happens, such as a bunch of First Children taking one look at that shit and deciding to fuck off to found the primasens of Nefer’khat with various mortals they cared about, elves splitting off to become the Sylv’alfar, etc. Eventually Calithex and the first human king, Harren Harrow, found Death’s City, aka Arx, in an attempt to appease her, which…kinda works, except Primeria won’t back down, which means Death won’t calm down, which leads to Sapphire doing the needful and sticking a knife in Primeria, becoming the First Assassin. Dance of Skulls over, Diamond becomes King of Caer’alfar.

Diamond was fine enough for a long, long while. At some point Obsidian got kicked out of Caer’alfar because he was an insufferable psycho fanatic, but he slipped back in and started whispering in Diamond’s ear. Like Smile said, there was an assassination attempt that was a very near miss, it sent Diamond into a spiral, Obsidian was like “hey, did you know Tyranny is really cool? Also what if we kicked off another apocalypse and maybe Primeria had a point about that whole undying thing after all” etc etc the Reckoning Baalphrigor is a kaiju and wrecked Caer’alfar with demons, and Diamond managed to completely sever himself from the Wheel, so it’s literally impossible to kill him.

The solution was Amber smashing him to bits with a special hammer, so the lesson here is that 1. messing about with Death leads to various apocalypses, and 2. the royal house of Caer’alfar needed some serious therapy, because King Calithex Ael’noctis somehow ended up being the most level headed sibling.

kalakh

@watno said in The Arx Secrets Thread:

@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:

Say My Name

How many people had this one?

Three.

Don’t forget we moved!

https://brandmu.day/

Posts made by kalakh