For the record Warlock is basicly also an entirely "The only purpose of the cabal is to do mini-quests for the imm's" direction and it pretty much fails in my opinion also. (Sorry to kick the twins when they're on vacation, but it came up.)

Essentially, if you don't have the same playing time as the twins (what 1-3 hours a night in the wee hours of the morning my local time) you get ZERO immteraction, ZERO quests, ZERO purpose, and ZERO direction. No matter how much you try to be a good Warlock (by your own definition, since no one else will give you one), you still get diddly just because the Imm's aren't watching you (Hey at least Scion has 3 Imm's to interact with who I see on a LOT, we got 1 for all intensive purposes). My lower level Scions feel much the same, either shine real, real bright or might as well go be a thug on Eastern road. (For the record, I'm trying to shine, but it's still early.) Valg even said it himself in response to Waigerits "Average people who don't take risks don't get quests." Doesn't that describe the majority of the people on the mud? If the only way to get direction in Scion or Warlock is direct from the Imm's, are the rest of us just there as fodder?

As a recent player of both Warlocks and Scion I see a lot of similiarities in how they're run. Very little overall direction but a lot of direction to those who interact with the Imm's a lot. That's a small few versus the cabal in general. You cannot run a cabal just by immteraction. It's a great sounding idea, I'm sure it's swell for the handful of mortals on top, I feel it's horrible for the rest of us and morale of the cabal in general.

Say what you want about Nexus, and I have, but at least they have a concrete, measurable, goal that just about any joe shmoe Nexite can work towards accomplishing and very possibly make progress on. I really, really envy that.

2 quick suggestions that came to me when I thought of the Nexus parallel.

1) Warlocks should start losing powers the more necromancers and anti-paladins there are in Thera at the time. (Give them a message "The great taint on magic at present interferes with your powers") Even if they have the grimmoire. Perhaps if there are zero necromancers and Ap's, then give the Warlocks an extra, really nice power (like up ward of deflection by x4 or something) that they'd really miss if a necromancer logged in suddenly. Then you'd see some evil mages being hunted alright. (Instead of number of necromancers and ap's increase the taint by the levels of necromancers and ap's, so that a single level 2 necromancer isn't messing up a dozen hero warlocks.)

2) Scion should similarly lose powers the more paladins, good aligned shamans and healers that exist in Thera. Tie their powers to their actions, and give every Scion a chance to make a difference to the whole cabal. Let every Scion meassurably "extinguish the light and bring darkness" and perhaps that would help out in the general direction bit.

Maybe it's low-brow and hampers rp in some ways, but it's a game, and this game is all about numbers in just about every detail except for cabal interactions. Throwing in some numbers can't hurt all that much.

>This is Salviar saying... Life was
>better before sliced bread, and
>when Empire existed instead of
>Scion (with it's current (everpresent)
>troubles).