Sat May 18 10:39:29 2013

At 12 o'clock AM, Day of Thunder, 10th of the Month of the Winter Wolf
on the Theran calendar Oshui perished, never to return.

Race:	human
Class:	shapeshifter
Level:	51
Alignment:	Good
Ethos:	Neutral
Cabal:	FORTRESS, the Fortress of Light
Age:	101
Hours:	764

But then, I'd guess you make a good team with every bard :)

To be honest, on the 'strategy' side, I wasn't happy with some of your points of view (mostly on the whole Battle-Fortress war), but then again, from an objective point of view, your arguments were viable, and hey, you're the Marshall. In terms of hierarchy, it can count :). Enough has been said on that.

I don't think I would have liked to be on the receiving side; you were aggressive, dogged, and persistent. And in a lot of situations, those are also 'win' buttons. As such I can understand the complaints on this whole OP form.

Then again: in my personal opinion, every Cabal Leader should be a force to be reckoned with (granted, the selection for this position should also be meticulously and carefully considered). They're the leaders; if you can boss them around, they shouldn't be leading a cabal, end of story. And yes, some classes, or races, will suffer more than others when fighting one of those leaders.

Anyways, GLWYN!

Having read your PBF, way to play a shifter and kick ass! Glad I never had to fight you.

When I played Eachainn I got to mostly beg off the whole BATTLE/FORTRESS war because I had Vall and Garwern, sorry? I left it for you to deal with. (Not really, its a good point of conflict.)

Maybe I should have made it harder on BATTLE from the FORT side when I had the chance to, but I took the hard way out when I gave my healer the choice to let me die fighting evil at the Destructor or to jump in with me and just completely run over BATTLE. & I died :) & it was OK.

Glad to see you played to (AGE DEATH) too.

Thrall aka Eachainn aka Morin's Disciple aka Cearnaigh.

PS.
Aside, keep the forums separate from the game folks. Really, the game plays better that way. Keep it interesting though.

And for my ego, and Oshui's player's edification, a link to Each's death thread, I got a lot of the same s#!t, http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=4&topic_id=108997&mesg_id=108998&page=

Having recently returned to the game and only playing as your ally I didnt experience any of the drama that folks are talking about here. I'd have to say you in fact discouraged Fort from killing neutrals, or that crazed elf, and I wanted to take the chance to thank you for the time you spent helping me. GLWYN.

Oshui tells the group, " Sorry if I drop dead during this."
True soldier on a mission through and through I have interacted with you with a couple other characters and you've always been rock solid. Good job and well played.

I very much enjoyed my first offense/air shapeshifter and my first real run at the shapeshifter class. I did not find it to be overly boring and I was happy that I was able to pk starting at low levels. Horns Of The Bull worked far better than Paws Of The Cheetah (something I was hoping to get at least a bit of mileage from) partial shift for low-level player killing, I tried to use paws twice and died both times. So it goes.

Wands are a very good option and there are a lot out there, but one in particular made the pk aspect of low levels effective up until around the 25th level. For the record, I do not like distention. I feel like each level should reset completely whatever count it is that leads to distending. As it was, I would raise a level, kill one person, and then be back to a distention adjusted pk range. Not always fun... but more targets, right?

I have a lot of neutral kills due to the Battle war and Nexus always being enemies. I set a policy for myself that I would only hunt neutrals that I had witnessed harming the Light, and then only kill them once per infraction. The exception was those who were marked as hunted due to the Battle war. I died a lot early on. I mean LOTS. I was set to con die in pretty short order while learning to pk as a shifter. I never maxed out my str and other stats because I pumped all my trains into con. I had no other choice, really. Some people said I never died and it took a lot to kill me; that just isn't true, but it helped me play more aggressively because people assumed I was unkillable and ran instead of using their rounds of combat/skills/focus to kill me.

Oshui was an experiment and a challenge... that grew, succeeded, and flourished in ways I did NOT anticipate. I expected to con-die in the mid 30's if I was lucky. The shapeshifter class, counter to my previous beliefs, seems decently balanced with other classes per rank. I was very grateful and happy to receive the Black Jaguar form. There were a lot of misconceptions and overstatements about the form at first, and then even more later. I do not believe the form was ever tampered with other than the mana adjustment for quest forms, which I did burn through at a healthy pace. When I received the form there were four enemies with quest forms as well as a lich and mummy that were completely dominating the Fortress, and for a long time before I made it to their range. I had heard about the quest form being available on the forums and I had observed that evil was dominating good for quite some time, so I decided that I would have lots of fights available, and a chance to earn it. It did not take long for me to get the tattoo/Maran/Leader/Quest Form because of the environment being ripe for anyone to go in and make a name for him or herself by killing the hell out of evil as the underdog. Effective killing, role-playing (in and out of the shrine), and leadership in general led to early rewards; not any sort of OOC communication or favoritism. I did not have any special dodging quest spells and the form didn't dodge spells naturally, that was an air major greater enliven (the whole reason I went Air first: the enlivens are SICK).

This was my first age death, but my second go at Fortress leadership. I had a Paladin elf who was an emo Cardinal of the Golden Sun and con-died 'neath Hunsobo's (and everyone else's) boots, so it was interesting to get a feel for leadership on the other end of the spectrum. There is a big difference in Rayihn's religion and Baerinika's religion, but I felt I was able to grasp the concepts of Baerinika's religion quickly and embody them well. I recommend Baerinika if you are attempting to be immersed in constant RP in a hands-on/hands-off setting based on what you put into it, and how you respond to/direct the interactions.

I received a lot of negative criticism both IC and OOC. It was easy to pick out who the players complaining on the forums were because most of them would say the same, verbatim, things to me in character they were saying on the forums. I saw a few times where it was said that I full looted someone. I never actually did this once. The time with Cradditch was due to me not staying to protect the corpse, apparently lowbies got to it and he assumed it was me since I did take a dagger and bracelet of charms. After that Empire started sacrificing all my gear every time I died: that was annoying and only led to me looting more of their things when I killed them due to needing the gear. I tried to mostly ignore the OOC comments that were a constant with this character, and tried to keep a very low profile on the forums; it didn't help when the OOC aspect of the reward system was reinforced in-character by Battle Immortals. :P Luckily, that was just a phase and calmed down after a while. It is understandable if you do not agree with or enjoy the way things play out sometimes, but I do not feel it is proper to let it leak out IC with your interactions with others. Then again, I was a stinkin' mage, so what do I know?




Immortals:

Baerinika....So much to say, but nothing we didn't discuss in character at one point or another. Thank you, and your work is appreciated. I think we both caught a lot of negativity due to this character, but in the end the good outweighs the bad and you cannot be favored by everyone all of the time. Especially when your avatar is out clawing their asses up :> I like that you seem to play for the characters that enjoy the game while ignoring those that attempt to bring you down to their level because they disagree with your methods/style. Thank you for the goodbye echoes and everything else that made this character a great experience.


Lian.... I very much appreciate the role contest win, my rewards were Magic's Might and the pseudodragon form. Magic's Might made a noticeable impact on my forms damage so I did always try to keep the veil thin after receiving it. The pseudodragon had its uses, but overall I used it for neurotoxic sting, something I already had with the yellowjacket form though I hadn't been utilizing it. I wish you were more active, there was a lot I was hoping to roleplay out with you in character based on magic and the Silver Tower, but I understand if your personal life does not allow you to spend much time on Carrion Fields. I still love you.

Twist....I feel there was no need for you to transfer me to ROTD because I killed the Commander of Battle a second time after almost an hour and tell me I was multikilling and breaking role. If you would have listened to what I was saying instead of blowing me off you would have realized our cabals were at war with each other due to the Commander purposefully not calling off the Battle/Fortress war- a move totally within his power. Yes I flew at him and beat him up and killed him as much as I could, probably less than five times, because innocents weren't going to cease being murdered until he either made the decision to be done with war, or con-died with a new Commander being chosen. This interaction really soured my experience, I think ROTD should be used for rules violations and if you want to state your opinion about an event I'd far rather interact through your IMM powers via mobs (loving on the Commander as Twist himself probably wouldn't have made any sense :P) that could lead to a more immersive RP environment. It was jarring, and made me feel like a shameful, dirty cheater :( Otherwise thanks for all you do. And for not playing fire giant sword this time around.

Akresius....I didn't understand the purpose of our interaction at Baerinika's shrine. I had just died to a group of three or four Scions ganging me down. The Lich, who had nothing to do with my death, was standing over my corpse when I got there and was talking a lot of smack about how weak I was. I told him that all he was good for was talk and that he never actually fought me, ever, so he did not have the right to gloat over my corpse when others killed me. I had been looted pretty good, and ganged down, and was in Baer's shrine to rest up when you came out of nowhere to tell me that I needed to adjust my attitude after deaths and not interact negatively with others. This basically felt like salt in the wound and I had no idea why you were in Baer's shrine lecturing me about my reaction to being ganged-looted-and talked down to by a character that never fights me. I mean, in a vacuum you're definitely RIGHT to a degree, but I feel I usually took deaths in stride pretty well. Gangs always raise my blood pressure, though.

All other IMMs and those above, thank you for a great FREE game. And your time and attention and imaginations.


Cabals:

Herald....I was banned from the Inn fairly early on, so I did not get to interact with a lot of you inside of it. I enjoyed my interactions with Maehayla and what she was trying to accomplish as High Herald. Good luck Shamise, you seem to be a good presence and encouraging events and things, I enjoyed your scavenger hunt.

Scion/Empire....Feast and famine. Scion was very powerful at first, as was Empire. It seemed like one key player from each cabal left, and the rest followed shortly after to move on to other cabals. Empire is making a solid push towards power recently, looks like Kraldinor outlived me after all. Curses! Most Scion players should just be ashamed of themselves. When all of you go OOC on me about the same issues and delete at the same time things become pretty obvious. Vhateel, you went from RPing steadily to OOC tells and log in/log outs if I was on, you weren't the only one, but I don't really understand the shift. Oh well. So it goes.

Battle....Tiarhelle/Cainargen: war with the Fortress did not make much sense to me, especially for the reasons you stated. You could have... you know, just fought me and the rest of mages in Fort. There were powerful mages as leaders in other cabals but you did not attempt to take their items. War with the Fortress ended up putting Battle from the strongest cabal to the weakest for the last several months, I'd *like* to think in no small part because of my own work and leadership of my Fortress brothers and sisters. And our impressive numbers :D. I do not think it was worth it, but I understand you wanted to impress and follow the path you were presented with and stir the pot a bit. I am glad Arratok had common sense and a sense of self-preservation that nobody else demonstrated and quickly ended the war after becoming Commander.


Tribunal....I feel like with Marcatis gone nobody is really watching over this cabal to any great degree. It is a bit preposterous to me that the Magistrate Library has books explicitly covering the subject of on/off duty and what it means, yet multiple Tribunals are flagging people for 'assisting criminals' outside of protected cities, including coming to defend their own cabal because the Magistrate is RAIDING it. There were even instances where no Fort members were criminals, and a specific Magistrate raided against Fort with Nexus and Empire on separate occasions and took the Orb. Once the Spire started inducting evil people and breaking previously discussed pacts, Oshui was a perpetual criminal the remainder of his life in protest for various injustices he witnessed against the Light. If I saw you aiding Empire and defending the Empire, or harm anyone of the Light I applied the Nexus rule to you, 1 death for you.

Outlander....I really enjoyed my interactions with Outlander even though I fought the wicked ones a lot. At times I wished I had chosen to become an Outlander instead of joining the Fortress, I really could have gone either way with my role. I believe that some players would have internally imploded in on themselves if Jack Blaguar would have had the insect swarm ability. Wow. That's a thought.

Nexus....It seemed like every time I logged in the Light was tipping, so most of you were enemies. I've played Nexus before, and I understand what it's about. But Oshui didn't! He took a hard line with y'all evil-lovers. For the most part you seemed evils that I couldn't hunt with regularity or freedom. So it goes.

I interacted with many different individuals since August, almost nine months ago. I could have made a baby in that time. Neat! I will respond to posts as I see them. If you have any log requests let me know and they will go on the other forum.

(EDIT: Let the fireworks begin! Flame on!)

I interacted with you on multiple fronts but almost always as one of your enemies due in part to your neutral killing ideals but overall, I didn't totally get all the banter about OP, though.

While playing my first A-P in a while, Inverox, I did think that those people on the forums may have been right about the situation because with 90% of my hero range life, I spent running or hiding from flyto murder and lived in partial fear that any time I died to you, I'd lose all my weapons after having that happen early on. Having said that, I did change gears a bit with the next char and I don't think I ever died to you nor was I ever in fear of you so I made my peace with my thoughts and moved on.

Overall, I'd say you weren't bad as a leader with the numbers of fortress, that I could see, and I had to assume that you were pretty good at RP having received both leadership and tattoo but as one thing that I'd like to suggest is that you give a little banter back and forth with those you kill or have fights with, even more so to the ones who either seem clueless as enemies or you completely own in PK. People tend to be more forgiving and less name calling and blaming ooc when they can have civilized chats ic. This isn't always the case but, in my opinion, the few people who break character are greatly outweighed, especially by worth, by the individuals who would benefit from the good RP between enemies.

Lastly, I'd like to say, Congratulations on a very long lived, deathful, and influential character and GLWYN.

"At times I wished I had chosen to become an Outlander instead of joining the Fortress, I really could have gone either way with my role. I believe that some players would have internally imploded in on themselves if Jack Blaguar would have had the insect swarm ability. Wow. That's a thought."

I'll go on record and say, after Xasivus, I will seriously consider replacing insect swarm with an alternative option if a deadly air shifter is ever up for Outlander leadership again. That ####'s crazy. The only reason I didn't do anything about it at the time is because I had a mortal that was getting repeatedly trounced by Xasivus, and taking action at that point would have been a conflict of interest.

But now that I've had some distance - I'll still maintain the "that's #### crazy" opinion of deadly air shifter + insect swarm. So no need to regret - if you had been Outlander and up for Sunwarden, I'm almost positive that I would have either goaded a coder into some minor modifications to insect swarm in relation to shapeshifter use, or just replaced it with something else.

I think I killed Qalita twice? Anyway, I thought having to revert to call them (and trib powers) had been a previous nerf anyway. And the one thing DID get toned down.

It was more than twice, and steamrolling a healer is no easy task, generally. If a *healer* is flat-out-of-options for survival in a 1 on 1 situation without any weird items or assistance, that's pretty crazy.

I know we discussed having to revert to call them, but I didn't recall it actually happening. If it did, well, good!

And that "one thing" that got "toned down" was just fixing something that was flat-out broken, and you know it. :P

Insects kept you from getting away, but gorilla had a lot to do with how easily I could steamroll anything that relied heavily on active skills.

I had to revert for insects when I played dorlanz in 2010, so that has been in for a bit

Yeah the one thing was broke for anything that had the mobility to take advantage of it (I didn't know about it before Xasivus)

imho

Is always has been. Like the time I used an oblander devil to kill some lowbie that mouthed off to me, thinking there was nothing I could do.

You did go over the top killing the battle commander and if you can't see it, you definitely needed to be taken to the rotd. Actions like this make it look as if you're willing to screw other players over just to improve your pk count, even if it isn't the case.

Having said that, I did witness you leaving stuff on corpses. I actually got a lot of amusement at just how well you timed your attacked. You couldn't have done the ones I saw better if you'd had snoop to help. e.g. It would be the second that someone slowed themselves after taking a beating from a mob.

But doesn't the eyes of the eagle or whatever it is, let a shapeshifter look at a target on the ground in real time? Or the scout skill?

This is only a guess on my part, but it would make sense.

I will give you your due for being good at PK. And you must have been good at someone's definition of RP to get all the accolades and rewards you got, but it is certainly not my definition of it.

I thought you were a terrible goodie. IC you came across as petty, gloating, and a very poor sport when you did lose. Whenever you did not get your way you resorted to insults and attempts at multikilling.

I have led the Fortress before, and I firmly believe you are probably the worst example of a "Good" character that I have ever seen. I legitimately believe you'd do a good job as evil, but from everything I whitnessed personally this was just an utterly #### character aside from the PK aspects.

nmft.

Agreed.

This character soured me as Ezgrint. As a lowbie he looted the piss out of me, which was fine but bothersome.

His tactics were effective but there was no RP there, at all.

That viewpoint was only further reinforced as Urgraj. As Urgraj I saw even worse roleplay from him. An extremely sore loser after he tried to divebomb a nexan and died(2-3 times I add) he then came at me nonstop, prioritizing me over the evils often.

I honestly have no idea Raybear saw in this character. He was atrocious.

I was a huge, huge fan of the first 100-200 hours of so of Oshui, both from a PK perspective (lots of people talk #### about being able to rack up kills with something like a lowbie good shifter, but you actually did it) and an RP perspective.

Over time I did get soured on you as your interactions seemed increasingly emo, peevish, or grumpy.

A lot of people loved this character and a lot of people hated this character, and I think both camps are right.

I was always a little nervous that you'd catch me doing some things that a druid might do from time to time that a Maran would likely take issue with.

We had enemies in common and I knew when you were around that they would be very limited in their movements. I'd say that we killed some Imperials together, but it was more like you ate their faces while I swatted at them with a stick.

From my POV, I never saw a single questionable thing from you, ever. You were badass and fearsome to watch in combat, pretty much the epitome of what a Baer Maran should be, I think.

I never really, really tried to RP with you because it's a real pain in the ass to try to do so with shifters.

But now that you're dead, I'm tempted to roll up an evil when things calm down for me.

As you said, so much to say but much of it's already been said. I did get some grief over you but I always stood up for you. I knew the code under which you played this character, and if I ever felt you were tip toeing around it, you knew I wasn't afraid to talk it out with you and give you a little nudge here and there in one way or another. I really liked watching this character grow RP wise, and I'm always tickled by a goodie who really can pk.

And when I compare you to my beloved Mende, I'm just speechless. Speechless!

Good luck on your next all around. Try another Rayihn follower!

Or have the waters of the bathhouse become too muddy?

Be aware that the character he was known for before that was a Rayihn kid and try reading that again.

Aware that favoritism is fun for one person in the gang bang.

This character validates everything said by Iunna and Cyradia.

I'm not sure how a rational person could even think that statement makes sense.

You slay me.

Note: Please do not actually slay me.

Someone like judge judy.

I don't understand the thinking that looks at an outstanding (whether or not you or I liked Oshui being a completely separate issue) character getting a quest form at a time that three or four of his opponents have them and immediately reaches the conclusion "the only way this could happen is if he's getting rewarded for his previous character, which was relatively well liked but died a ####-ton. All the conspiracy theories must be true!"

I honestly feel sorry for you.

Edit: Gaspar, if I clicked the right buttons in the admin console, you can have a timeout for a while.

If I didn't click the right buttons, I'll feel kinda silly, I guess, when you post again.

(n/t)

What more would he want. Rational thought? Nah.

that you can't even do passive-aggressive reputation smears properly.

Go back and reread Cyradia's post on dios, then try again.

One of these days you'll get it right, ya tool.

No offense, but I'm not the one in the bathhouse.

I don't play to perve out.

Every word leaks of vindictive butthurt.

Don't be mad, bro. Just let it go; intelligent design was never a real theory, people actually landed on the moon, and nobody really cares what your pathetic delusions about this game are.

Because that's the exact tone you have all the time, what with being a know-it-all

Do you at all care that you're in the minority here in considering him a good maran/goodie?

If you don't care, then fine I guess I'm just a guy who disagrees with you and has way less power.

If you do care, well. I would highly encourage you to take some open and candid feedback. Maybe not on this thread, but perhaps we should all have a discussion on what it means to be good in CF. Because if this is what the head good IMM thinks is worthy of kudos, well, I should just keep playing evil.

And no I'm not just bitter because you called my Marshall shady years ago....not really.

n/t

Although I, personally, am not a big latter-day Oshui fan, I am sympathetic to him, because honestly most of the people who play the game feel like, if they're neutral, they can try to kill Fort and Fort pretty much just has to suck it up -- that an hour later Fort can't decide, "Hey, things are more in my favor now -- I'm going to kill that guy who tried to kill me earlier."

And I think that's crap and it drives me insane whenever I play good. Good does not have to mean you're "super-turn-the-other-cheek double-Jesus good." Good can legitimately choose to punish evil acts.

Easily 90-95% of the complaints I ever saw about Oshui were of almost exactly that form. The other 5-10% sure did rub me the wrong way, though, and even when Oshui's actions were very defensible, his attitude around them could still be really emo/bitchy and annoy me.

I think reasonable people can disagree about where exactly the line falls between "tough, non-pushover goodie" and "you're not really good, anymore."

I don't think you were asking me but there's my opinion if you wanted it.

n/t

Baer. Or Lian.

I always loved that Oshui hunted down my near dead svirfneblin in the underdark when I ran away nearly dead from a 3 or 4 versus 1 raid at the Destructor. I thought that was some stellar Goodie RP right there and really showed what a Marshall and Maran should be like.

But... your cabals were at war, and for whatever else you can say about Oshui, he didn't choose that war.

(Although you could certainly argue that Fort really did pick that war and Oshui as leader could have stomped on it, but didn't.)

in my premium battlefield data. I guess that isn't completely accurate. I could have sworn it was twice within an hour or so.

There's little I can really say here, and I'm sure nothing that would sway you but you've asked me to and so I'll try.

Oshui was not perfect. But what exactly would you have liked me to do? You guys complain when I punish, you complain when I reward. The solution is, as is shown by the fact that most imms have been driven to this kind of apathy by the playerbase, to do neither. To not offer anything enriching to the game because it inevitably pisses someone off. You guys haven't quite broken me to that point yet though this latest wave of drama is making an impressive effort.

I will also point out that people are always much more vocal with vitriol than compliment. It is what it is, so I don't know that I completely agree that I'm in the minority.

As I said in my goodbye to Oshui, I was glad that I had the RP with him that I did, and as I also said, I spent a lot of time trying to steer him in certain directions. We had a long talk about the Cainargen situation and I told him flat out he shouldn't be killing you more than once a day. After that, he did change his behavior.

And I can only blame him so much. He took what Baer believes and made it reality in the game. Light's tipping? Yes, Baer says you can hunt Nexus. It's safe at that point to assume they are doing evil and you need to stop them. Your neutral is doing bad things to good people? Yes. You should die for that and hopefully learn a lesson. Cainargen would not stop the war and a lot of innocent (read non mage) Forties died for that. What exactly did you want Oshui to do?

Did Oshui push the boundaries of these concepts sometimes? Sure. But he was also pretty careful about staying right around those boundaries. I very rarely faulted him for any of those neutral pks. Having a neutral alignment does not excuse you from evil behavior. It isn't an automatic get out of Maran jail card. Right before Oshui died, a neutral Trib ganged him down at the Vanquisher with a bunch of Empire. After Oshui unghosted he killed that guy. The guy bitched up a storm about what "bad" goodie behavior that was. Why exactly should that be bad behavior? Sure, there are goodie roles you can play that will ignore/forgive such things. Oshui didn't have that kind of role. Truthfully, neither does Baer. Should that kind of grudge carry over log ins and days? No, I don't think so. But that's a difficult one to really define and probably one of the boundaries Oshui pushed.

As for the Battle/Fort war, I hated it. I hated how OOC Mardrorn treated everything, the giant chip on his shoulder, and I always hate when Battle declares war on Fort because the mages never really suffer for it. Only the newbies trying to learn the game playing a paladin or whatever suffer as all of a sudden they have to defend against a bunch of neutrals with deathblow. This is evidenced:

Nov 6, 2012 |Lv 51|BattleRager Village|Drogdenbaryd vs 2: Cainargen (15%, crush), Zarkyem (84%)
Nov 7, 2012 |Lv 51|Hamsah Mu'tazz|Drogdenbaryd vs 1: Cainargen (100%, parting blow)
Nov 9, 2012 |Lv 51|Voralian City|Drogdenbaryd vs 1: Cainargen (100%, cranial hit)
Nov 10, 2012|Lv 51|Fortress of Light|Filndar vs 2: Cainargen (65%), Louveray (34%, blast)
Nov 10, 2012|Lv 51|Fortress of Light|Manezin vs 2: Cainargen (66%, crush), Louveray (33%)
Nov 10, 2012|Lv 51|The Ruins of Ostalagiah|Drogdenbaryd vs 1: Cainargen (100%, smash)
Nov 11, 2012|Lv 51|Fortress of Light|Drogdenbaryd vs 2: Louveray (39%), Cainargen (60%, smash)

Yes, you killed some Fort mages during that time too. But do you think Drogdenbaryd thought any more highly of you than you did Oshui? If he did it's only because that guy seems like a genuinely nice person.

*edit*
I should have added in more to answer your question of why I liked Oshui.

He stuck to his role like glue. It might not have been a role people liked but he did not veer off it.
I watched him spend countless hours helping Forties and general goodies who needed advice about pk'ing, prepping, and tactics in general.
He never quit off without his item. I respected the *hell* out of that. Yes, he had a tough combo that made standing up to bad odds and getting an item back *easier* but that didn't mean it was always easy. He took on odds and situations that I would not have blamed him for avoiding.
He put tremendous effort into growing the light in general on CF. Sure he was pretty brusque a lot of the time and that turned a lot of people off. I'm not too different though in that I also hate ####ting around. I can't really fault him for that without being a hypocrite.
I could probably go on but I think this is enough for now.

People see what they wanted to see when they assessed Oshui, they didn't witness every hour of the char's life so that they could judge him as a whole. I fought Oshui as an imperial, and as a nexus char for example, and had nothing but respect for the guy. And if someone snooped my chars, and from that view was all they ever saw or knew of Oshui, they would have liked him too.

He was far classier to all the imperials than any of us ever were to him when he died, watching him get fulled after a 5 on 1 was a reason for my imperial's deletion. I always tried to loot his corpse just so I could give things back to him because I figured otherwise he was getting little to nothing. Oshui PKing me did not seem reason to full the guy, at least to me.

When he logged on, I witnessed the mass log offs of the imperials a few times, (the guy swung the cabal dynamics without a doubt) I even talked to him about it a couple times. His play time seemed to allow him to come on around 4-5 pm EST, which was usually when mine ended, but I saw enough of him to get a feel for him. Sometimes I tried to stay around just to get one fight with him, even though I knew he was likely going to tear me apart. I thought overall he was a good character that did have some fun RP. I imagine having people telling you OOC things gets old and jades any player, but taking the time to RP with him brought RP out of him most everytime I spoke to him. I saw him deal with getting fulled without batting an eye, when that would have caused other players to delete.

As a nexus char, he attacked me because I attacked goodies and killed a few. One death for one offense, and then he left me alone, though I think he only killed me once. Given that light always tipped, it was pretty frequent that I had a debt, but again, he was always classy about things and if anything was fun because of the challenge he posed to fight. If he pushed the boundaries of what a goodie should do, well good. Some people should do that, it makes things more interesting than Team A vs Team B vs Team C.

And he got himself involved with my dwarf's obsession with Tolgrumm, which was also fun to see.

I am not saying the char was close to perfect, but FFS, I have yet to see any char that has ever come close to being perfect consistently, especially over 700+ hours. My best long lived characters all had those moments of going OOC in various little ways. They all got frustrated when a lot of bad breaks or bad odds were all I saw for periods of time. And the older/stronger your char gets, the more people will complain about you, because at 50 hours they can't compete as well against you. Allysia got bitched about and she was really nothing more than a bard that really any player could recreate with relative ease if they wanted to spend a little time on the char, and probably have more success with than I ever did.

I think that even though Oshui had a giant mark on him and lots of people watching him, he did his best to just play his character in the manner most of us tried to when we played, to be mostly IC, mostly trying to add to the game/fun. And if he had flaws and bad moments, well, we all do, and I doubt many other players would not have behaved similarly if they were subjected to the non-stop bitching & criticism in game and out that this guy was.

So cheers to Oshui, I thought you did well.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I feel it is important to get your opinion on Oshui just so everyone who can be objective gets an understanding of how his actions matched his alignment.

As far as it goes, I have interacted with Oshui as both enemy and ally and found him generally good to be around. The only side of him that I never really saw and had thought was required is that if a goodie has to kill neutrals, they should feel and show remorse. I didn't ever really see this from him but I also didn't have a lot of opportunities to see it. All in all a small issue.

>>The only
>side of him that I never really saw and had thought was
>required is that if a goodie has to kill neutrals, they should
>feel and show remorse. I didn't ever really see this from him
>but I also didn't have a lot of opportunities to see it. All
>in all a small issue.

IMHO this is a case by case kind of thing. If I'm a Maran and I come across a cloud giant killing storm giants for xp and killed the cloud, why would I be remorseful? That would imply that I believed I should have not acted and rather let the slaughter continue.

After they were dead and your goodies defended, you would feel remorse (specifically sad) for killing something that is more confused than evil. I could have swore this was in the Fortress somewhere, but don't have those saved to my machine to verify. Perhaps I am just flat out wrong.

But honestly, you are so far off base it's ridiculous. How OOC I treated everything??? My character was initially opposed to the war, but when the Commander declared it Thror came down and said that I would earn Noldar by the way I shaped it. So my character came out hard like a bard. The reality is, your butthole is sore from everyone saying you over reward and when you -thought- I was bitching about it IC you over reacted. It was in fact YOU who sent out an OOC note to Battle and Fort in response calling my dwarf bard a hypocrite. Obviously, my dwarf bard doesn't think he's a frigging hypocrite, he has no idea (nor does any PC) that Rayihn, or any imm, "approved" his role.

The fact that an imm would go OOC in a note to a couple cabals surprised me. Totally uncool in what's supposed to be an RP immersive game. The whole situation affirmed for me what half a dozen immortal friends were telling me. You aren't a pro-imm.

As for Oshui, his player and I had always been cool and had even had some characters who were buddies. (I have always known who he is through a mutual friend.) Never the less the fact that Sindrai had his goodness downgraded and Oshui got a black jaguar makes me lolwut. I won't cry conspiracy but I will say if you want to reward people who play like Oshui and lose people who play like me, and that's obviously what you want, then fine. You accomplished that.

You can obfuscate the facts and play like you don't know why there is a sense of "dread" at Zulg's departure all you want - but most people realize how many imms they loved left citing you as the reason. Even more players have left as a result of experiences with you. We all know Zulg dealt with all the related HR #### and without him to do it the fear is it will run rampant.

If I haven't played/posted in months, why post now? Because I'm watching the MUD go through hard times it won't fully recover from and I know it didn't have to be this way. It's irritating as hell because as much as I have no interest in playing Carrion Baers, I would love to play Carrion Fields from 10 years ago. I, along with hundreds of others, invested a lot of love into CF.

Right or wrong when this thing dwindles down to 12 diehard players at peak times and is otherwise dead there are A LOT of people who are going to say that was your fault. For that matter, they'll blame Nep for backing all of your plays. (Otherwise I love ya, Nep. So, sorry.)

For my money you didn't single-handedly destroy CF, but your hands destroyed more of it than any other single person. Hope it's shaping up like you want it.

EDIT: Added an "n" and a comma.

There's a big lingering disconnect here in that I believe you that, to you, there was nothing OOC about how you played out the Battle/Fort war thing (and indeed that's the way I saw it at the time), yet about a half dozen people made comments to me about it of the form, "Wow, this is the whole forums rewarding circlejerk bleeding OOC into the game in a bad way."

I think all that's very true - but it really doesn't change anything I said above.

NT

Here's the reality: Baer has done as much to keep CF alive and playable as anyone.

End of story.

But I was pretty sure he was headed for trouble from the first time we met. I always thought he was way too tolerant of Xasivus for a Baer follower.

I didn't like Oshui as much (from other char interactions) but I never saw anything that I thought was questionable, although frequently douchey.

Having had a heavily rewarded hig profile char, I always went out of my way not to be antagonistic, which is my biggest criticism of Oshui. I ate more fulls with Xasivus than I have w any char since I started playing again, but shrugged them off because I knew I had things no one else did anyway. And very often left ppl I killed w better stuff than I was using.

>We all know Zulg dealt with all the
>related HR ####

Actually, no. That's always been the job (not quite but close to the only job) that Zulg did not want and did not do (and I don't blame him for it.)

You responded to my emails in the Jindicho situation...Zulg did not.

I think that makes me like Zulg even more though. *sigh*

The Players right now are much worse than the IMMs.

Or maybe just the players I loved playing with just don't play anymore.

I honestly don't mind RayBaer at all. FWIW. I disagree with the over-rewarding that's going on, and since she's on 4-6 hours a day at least, she probably gives a good amount of rewards, but still...

Well said. I was always on the Nexus end of things. I didn't care for how hard he hunted, but he stayed true to his word for only chasing to death once every time a Nexun hunted the Fort. The last time, he caught me right when I unghosted and I had cast "Imbue weapon" staff and took the >>>annihilate<<< so I ate some good hits and he jack blaguared me to deaths. I told him his blood thirsty ways would land him in the deepest circle of hell. He laughed it off.

With that said, I really like the autonomy that is given to leaders to make their own mistakes without being micromanaged. As far as "good" goes, it seems like there is such a wide net cast for what a good player should put up with. It is nice to see someone who can be the teeth for the goodly folks, but it was always very annoying to have Oshui on my butt chasing me around Thera when there were evils to hunt. I can understand why, but it made Light-tipping a chore to deal with. Him being true to his role, I can only think of a handful of people I have interacted with who have done better over long lives.

Rayihn, for all the criticism people have griefed you with, do not be too galvanized. There are plenty of folks who appreciate the time and energy you pour into this very free and very awesome game.

Kuryaelin, Carg, Thivirs - Avid Nexuns all, and fond of the Lady.

Don't sweat it. Some times it gets hard but really stick to your guns.
I was taking some math course in college oh so very long ago. :) and
the teacher put something incorrect on the board. Now me, I tend to
not give a ####. I let things roll, he ended up telling people what
the answer was supposed to be, and you could see the kids in the class
trying desperately to make it work. After a a bit of giggling to
myself, I noticed a few looked like they were going to say something
but didn't. I gave it a bit more, then finally pointed out the error.
So the teacher goes off on me, unfortunately for most of the people
who know me IRL, I happen to be a strong willed person, hehe I know
I know, I'm flaky and wishy-washy in game and probably on the forums.
Flaky at least... So anyway, half the students start in on me
defending the prof. Finally I went with the "Hey man if a million
people started talking about the sky being orange, but you still
knew it was blue" argument. In the end the prof, his wife and I
got along fine, hung out etc.. though they started a hard-core get
James to stop smoking campaign. You could smoke in the halls but not
in class, holy crap how long ago was that?!?!!?!?! Where was I going
with this? Oh yeah. So you have a few kinds of players here.
I just erased a big 'ol thing on it, but figure I'd better to go
with a more direct example. So oshui is playing along (for the hater's
benefit, I'll go with supposedly?) supposedly playing his character
free of any sort of 'cheating' or shennanigans (sp?) He strikes the
maran chord. Just kinda fits... by design, because that's what players
do. I wanna play an imperial, I fill my character with imperial'ness'.
He stands out early on 'cause hey he's a helluva pker. So you are like
'rock on lil shifter!' Then he runs across one of the "has to, must
, can't be, etc... people... (You know the guy who when he gets cut
off in traffic shouts about how 'they can't do that' when it just
happened?) *grumble grumble* Little bit later it happens more and
more. Oshui kicked bob's ass because he kicked bob's ass, but bob
can't handle that, there must be a why. The imms who think he's cool
MUST be giving some extra juice. (earned or not doesn't matter here)
Then you get a split. Some evils switch sides, 'cause hey no one wants
to have thier ass kicked all the time right? Some others design a
character they think is built to 'take that bastard down' others
just get petulant and sulk. Of the ones who switched sides if they
don't 'get it' and can't get the same sorts of rewards even though
they maybe played 60 hrs before delete delete, start to mutter with
those who are 'sulking out loud' That sort of thing spreads.
A couple (or more) of the players start being douchey, this kind of
MAKES you have to kinda defend him, because the mouthiest ones are
attacking you as well. They really leave no choice. This of course
makes the muttering spread. (Example, pick any political figure,
start spreading rumors through various social media about them in a
negative light under different usernames etc... keep one common thing
going like maybe them being a child molester who covered it up.
after a while other people will tell YOU 'hey did ya hear...'
Hell you might get a job offer as a journalist Hahaha)

Where was I again? Oh yeah, do your thing, blow them off, in the end
thier opinion doesn't matter anyway. As I said, it ain't easy.

All of this is my 2 cents, no need to listen to it. If you are
bothered by any of it, I'm sorry... not really but I'm sorry. :)

Advice to the players who took issue with oshui: Feel someone has
an unfair advantage? Want to roll that thing that takes advantage of
his weaknesses? Roll it and take the bastard down. Bringing it up on
one of the forums won't help you... but other people who feel slighted
might... get a big group together in game and just pile up on the guy.

General advice: given to me long ago I think by nep actually was that
when someone whips you every time, roll that combo and try it out,
see what it's problems/advantages are. If you only play certain combos
then of course that 'one thing' is going to always steamroll you.

Advice for imms: The more 'open' concept where you guys come out and
say what's on your mind IS way cooler than it was back when, the down
side seems to be people are starting to get that entitled thing going
on, we (the playerbase as a whole) is expecting you to tell us WHY
you did or did not do a thing. Strangely, it seems to help, you bust
out with a why and #### calms right down. (most of the time)
So maybe go back to the old way, or open with the why of a thing???
I have no idea which would be better, I just know it would be better
to go all the way to one side or the other and not be in the road.

I'll shaddup now.
:)

We as players want you to reward our characters and punish characters that we don't like cause they do things like kill us, or take our stuff or tell us mean things.

As far as compliments vs vitriol go, I think in a way it is a compliment everytime someone logs on to play.

This has always been a ultra competitive, emotional game. I think that is the reason it has lasted as long as it has, but is also the cause of the hysterics which surround it. I think another part of the draw is the feeling that the next char you roll could be the next Zorsaul/Cadbru/Kostyan/Narissorin/Oshui, but people often get upset when it doesn't work out that way.

You'll notice that some rewarded players get nothing but praise. Eg recent scion with quest form.

However, here we have a player that has openly stated that he was trying to con kill another character. And was indeed choosing to multikill.

For you to say its just that people don't like their enemies killing them is off the mark. It's probably true in some cases, but not all.

When I think back to nererial, I remember getting a negative comment for saying to kill someone when they unghosted. The context was that this guy had died and while we were all fighting at the outer of his canal was just standing next to us. He'd also just mouthed off to us. So you have a guy whose intention appears to be to attack again and who is offensive.

Compare that with oshui killing a guy that was clearly just collecting his gear from the inner after just dying to him. He claimed self defense but he could have been in form without attacking. And the victim was a player that was always respectful to his enemies. That was not cool and not the kind of guy that people like to see rewarded.

Yeah, oshui got grief where he didn't deserve it but he did plenty that turned people off besides simply making a lot of pks.

And not specifically about this situation. For the rewards Oshui received, I think he did come across as a poor sport and ultimately did a disservice to Baer, whether she thinks that or not.

I really liked Oshui, you almost always turned the balance to the light so we were almost always opposing each other, but there were a few times we got to fight together and that was fun. I never saw you break role, and you went into many situations guns a blazin, and managed to take out one or two before needing to retreat. That is something I admired.

As for the rewards, there is no way to make everyone happy, and I think that I would much rather play with the chance to get rewarded, as well as fight those who are different than to have a shot at nothing.

Thank you Oshui for being a fun enemy (and sometimes ally) and congratulations on a solid character.

--Mylene

Do you have any examples or reasons that Oshui shouldn't be considered a maran/goodie? Other than his belief that "neutral isn't a get out of jail free card" which frankly has always been part of the Baer religion and Maran canon.

Some people mention his looting. But as Oshui remarked himself, this was usually the case of a lowbie looting the corpse. I think the player kept a quite reasonable attitude through being full looted after going for retrieval against 5 to 1 odds.

So, to be clear, I'm in the dark was what constituted Oshui's "NON_GOOD" behavior.

Fortress is a cabal for noobs. Noobs dont kill people. Oshui killed people. He therefor is not allowed to be in Fortress.

Or how about killing people is something evil people do. Oshui killed people. Therefor he must be evil.

The flawed logic of the CF playerbase can have many of these stupid reasons for disliking a character. But to me it seems a goodie racking up a nice amount of kills is getting a lot of crap from jealous players who wish they could do the same. And ofcourse want that goodie to be on team evil so they wont have to fight it.

n/t

Nor do I like having people on my side that drop full loots for minor things.

I didn't witness any looting nastiness from oshui but it's ridiculous to say that people's objections are because they are jealous or fearful. Some are, but there's more to these things than that.

Your view on sportmanship of multikilling isn't relevant to whether Oshui broke role as a good aligned char.

Moroever, what is ridiculous is that forum rumor and "where there's smoke, there's fire" hearsay arguments are being employed here.
No one has brought up an example in a thread full of trolls and flames. Frankly, it's ridiculous that there are 20 complaints but no actual substance. So yes, it looks quite like jealousy and fear. Especially when people are posting things like "don't roll another imperial character until Oshui is gone" on the forums.

He said that people were bitching about rp because they kept getting killed, and would love to have him on their side.

Actually, if you think someone is a poor sport, you are much more likely to take issue with their rp, since you have to pick rp that accommodates poor sportsmanship.

I have to agree with Daevryn here. I watched you quite a bit and my observations of your character did not line up with the positive attention you were receiving. You were a selfish leader who had a great early RP strength which became more of a jaded woe is me personality.

Now I don't want to spend time demeaning an obviously successful character but I will say that I felt the player bled through the character far too often. Even your very "bold" interactions with me were borderline spiteful.

I applaud any IMM willing to pull aside a player who appears to be purposefully trying to ruin someone's experience, so kudos to Twist.

You "and several other characters" seemed to put words in the mouth of several characters (including mine) regarding why the Battle/Fort War even began. It had nothing to do with out of character rewards but everything to do with Mages gaining 'stronger/high magic' powers. It would have been interesting to see Fort attempt to understand the source of the discontent before jumping to a combative conclusion. Padwei and the Acolytes appeared to be making a case for this but the dominant half of the fort didn't seem to be interested.

There is no context to your previous character so I'll presume this was all part of the master goodie plan and there is something in your role I just didn't quite grasp. I can appreciate the no back down approach to Battle. It made for an interesting War, which is always good for the dynamic of the mud.

Good luck with the next.

That had been sending notes about it had a pretty HUGE chip on his shoulder about quest forms and such. Keeping that in mind that the one person at the time was spewing such non-sense. It MIGHT of colored all of battle that way. You know how the vocal minority is.

I played this MUD for over a decade and a half and fought many, many quest forms and spells over the years. Black Jaguar is no comparison to the Nose. Black Jaguar is no comparison to gate + charm person, for that matter. My Battle + Fort war talk was on command of Thror and purely IC. The person responsible for getting defensive and misreading the whole deal was mostly Baer.

There are a few things left to shake out then I have a few things to say I think the CF populace should know. Some these are relevant to this discussion. So, until then...

The Battle vs Fort War was based on the then Commander's ideals to make a lasting impact on Thera.

I might have my Commander's a little confused but I'm fairly confident that this was during the Akedeh/Tia era which was adopted by the rest of the Battle Village.

We just happened to have a very loud Dwarven bard at the time who managed to be vocal about presenting that initiative to the rest of Thera. I was in full support of the mortal decision because I feel dynamics like that are good for the mud.

I also feel like Black Jaguar was good for the mud, as are powerful forms, AP's and Liches. An important aspect of CF is the mega Anti-Hero who inspires fear in their enemies based on skill and in some instances rare (rewarded) abilities. Battle just happens to be the cabal that is the direct antagonist to those mega (magic) characters.

Akedeh was an antagonist for the war with every cabal who had any magician as the primary leader. There was no dwarven bard during Akedeh's life.

You are right that an antihero from time to time is good.

But we didn't have this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihero

We had someone who wasn't interested in RP unless it got him something who also seemed intent on griefing a good portion of the playerbase...

Don't believe me? Check his immortal comments.

But hey, that is what an antihero is supposed to be as a goodie, right?


I will tip my hat and say that form was tough as #### though.

You're right and I knew I would get the characters wrong.

It was Tia and Cainargen who both took up the mantle of taking on uber-mages.

Dwarf bard didn't start singing that song until the mortal leader of Battle made it a point to wage war.


What's done is done. I thought that clarification would help with perspective.

Just saying that your criteria was not soley, "Is there a mage leader"

I remember it the criteria being "mage leader with extra magic".

Nope, that wasn't Akedeh's intent anyway. If it came off that way it wasn't meant to.

Him being an outlander and the village not knowing if he was logged on or off for a large percentage of time probably had more to do with outlander not being raided. Hard to be hardline about raiding a cabal when mages are leading and awake if you can't tell when they are around.

Oh, we're mixing situations. I was talking during the Tiarhelle era.

v

It started with Akedeh to be sure, but it ended (temporarily) while I was Commander, much to the annoyance of some. I didn't much care for the war as it seemed it was 90% battle killing fort non-mages. Battle was also pretty strong at that point and was for most of my time as Commander. Oshui I think was created a few days before age death for me, so I never got to fight him, so it was mostly Eachainn for the Fort mages. Not worth a war over in my opinion.

From my POV as Commander, war was not the answer and really was a distraction from our real purpose, that being killing mages/scions/islanders. So I disallowed Battle from taking the Orb or raiding the fort, with one basic caveat.
No mage was safe anywhere, so if a fort mage wanted to hide in the fort, you could go in after him and if he sat at the inners, you could kill it. Of course, to end the raid, all that mage had to do was word/teleport. This applied to Empire, Outlander and Tribunal as well.

Tia resumed the full-blown war after I died, which was probably a good 5 months later.

That was very similar to what Akedeh started, and pretty much exactly what I tried to do at first. But the mages never got caught as they would just run away and snicker. That is when the "If a cabals leader is a mage, you can take their cabal item while that mage-leader walks Thera"

Basically attempting to strong arm the mage into defending or retrieving. And if non-mages came, the villagers had distinct orders to only repel them, fight them off. If non-mages fought with the mage and the mage rolled out, let the warrior run too, etc...

I was playing Cand and I'm not sure how you can seriously blame Baer for what you wanted.

Mardrorn wanted war, pushed for war, talked #### to me out of range, wrote elegant notes about Oshui/Andi needing to step down.

I mean, it's all good because it's dwarf RP, but I think your frustration towards Baer bled into Fortress members. It's very ironic considering I thought she was the one that approves ppl playing unique race/class.

That there are a few things left to shake out etc. you kind of need to do that whatever forum(not that I'm approving it on any of the forums because I don't want to get banned, it's scary I have to parenthesis this but damn people are just getting banned all over the place), until I can take this seriously.

Because Mardrorn was a douche, there I said it.

I really could see both sides of it at the time.

Without naming names, some people in Battle at the time very clearly were pushing a very thinly veiled sour grapes anti-rewards agenda.

But I equally could see how it was a very unique and very clever take on a Battle Inquisition kind of thing. "It's bad enough dealing with the mages who know the magics we've been fighting for centuries -- we need to put extra focus on anyone who's discovering new things!"

It's another one of those cases where no matter how you thought people meant it, depending on the person you might be right or wrong.

From a player perspective thanks for pulling off the times my connection was FUBAR which happened on several occasions. Not everyone does that, although there are many who do, and it always makes me view them more favorably.

Our interactions were always as cordial as they could be, but what I saw of some of your interactions w others seemed a bit arrogant and vindictive at times, although I do realize good doesn't have to equal nice.

I wanted to watch you more, but just didn't have the free time. But this was an impressive character all around - a real accomplishment. I hope your next will not be a letdown :)

Far as Yuolud's concerned, yer a candidate fer sainthood.
Ain't too many of th' solid, fightin kind that ain't thinkin yer th' best. Most ain't talkin too much.

I can't believe how fast you were. Wish I had learned some more from you, I'm too slow to keep up though lol. Super impressive character glwyn

Horrible role play. Absolutely ####ing horrible. Next time you roll something up, please at least *try* role playing with your fellow cabalmates instead of bitching at them for not helping you kill neutral alignment characters.

Like full looting out of range goodies.

He didn't order us to loot goodies, just neutrals and evils.

I don't remember ever ordering anyone to loot anyone else. I'm pretty certain this never happened and this isn't true, unless I was asking them to loot my gear back after I died and killed someone.