Wed Sep 4 20:00:54 2013

At 1 o'clock AM, Day of Freedom, 4th of the Month of the Dragon
on the Theran calendar Sehdara perished, never to return.

I am all for playing the underdog but I just don't think Scion is for me, that was a bit too much. I never really saw any other Scions on and had no potential applicants to even speak about induction with. I believe the one person I did induct ended up being Jerrokrar but he deleted the next day so it never became an issue.

I just got a bit overwhelmed for the last 4 weeks and it became unfun. Rarely had the cabal item and never had cabalmates, the only interactions I had were with my enemies and I'd rather be sociable with allies but I didn't have any other than orcs, and I was just waiting for them to bash me down half the time.

Arvam it was a huge coincidence that I chose sphere revelation/divination and RP'd that sphere, I was half hoping Reksah was still around some and he might get interested, but then your quest things began to happen and the role really started to take shape and have meaning and depth. I'm very happy with how that turned out and am sorry for bailing on you.

Thank you for the chance to be Scion leader! Poor Scion! Zhenyen...I think its your hours that really mess things up for people, I purposefully stayed up super late a few evenings until I got inducted, then I never saw you again. The people that complain about your RP just aren't really trying. I think Scion is a HUGE powergamer cabal, but at the end of the day it is a RP cabal and most people just aren't willing to do both.

Thanks IMMs for a great game!

Glad you enjoyed your chance.

I am surprised to see who the player is, but you've had a pretty good track record of surprising me in the past. So...

You had excellent RP, and I enjoyed every interaction. (Oh the complaints I got about you, hilarious. Well done.)

As for my times *shrug* I'm at the mercy of my job. Things have changed again, though I'm not sure if that helps any applicants.

Zhenyen

This is my first Scion since they changed it so you have to RP to get in. People who complain about Scion induction process have to be pretty lazy and uncreative. I came up with my 'research' idea without knowing anything about cabal dogma other than what is written in the Lyceum. I actually played a shifter right before this one but ended up absolutely hating the vampire bat form and deleted before I could get inducted. That was sort of a trial run at induction, I was able to interact with you and that Isozula person to learn what was expected. My first research idea sort of sucked so I was happy to be able to come up with something new.

You know, the total lack of scions or people wanting to play scions and the induct process?

I'm sure its not impossible but why bust your chops to be a solo pvp'er? It's arguably better running uncaballed or even Tribunal.

... Sure the solo PKing sucks, but this far I've had no other cabal be even close to matching the fun of RPing the research projects of Scions... Oooh I still wish I'd have 200-300 more hours of Zameida to finish the stuff I begun... *Le sigh*

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.

You circled around until something was near death and then pounced... for what it was worth I really enjoyed the fight we had in the Imperial lands (Toktok) that one time.

GLWYN... I wish shapeshifter could do more RP.

Damn there goes one if the very very few allies Ruk had, and the only person to understand how to effectively "socialize" with him.

We could have done terrible things together.

Yeah how that all worked out was pretty neat. It was dumb luck you ended up being in sphere. (Granted nowadays I'm pretty lenient about sphere stuff as long as it makes sense from Arvreligion standpoint) I liked the rivalry you had going with Saersha and it was generally always fun to watch you bring havok upon Herald. The time you were hanging out with Shamise trying to poke at the Mansion was hilarious.

Shamise: "Blah, blah, something about history"
Sehdara: "You're purple and ridiculous"

The plots you hatched were all genius. The trick to get the King of Akan on the hunt to draw out Kahal, how you'd routinely grab random third party Tribbie's to do your bidding despite being kind of a career criminal. It was very fun to watch.

You were pretty murderific but always made a point to try to RP with the enemies and folks you killed and also had some fun to watch interactions there. A top notch character all around and one of the few I can really say was *actually* evil instead of team evil...which is and forever will be a pet peeve of mine. You trucked through some rough times but I could tell up towards the end there you were getting bummed about the constant odds and I could see how never having friends or allies makes it harder to come by the good RP moments.

Anyway. Top notch character, great fun to watch and couldn't have asked for a better setup for my two first marked followers. Good luck with your next.

I was a Whiysdan follower and wholeheartedly believed in allowing people to be who they were. That being said, I got in trouble a few different times by sending out notes to all for people, most notable the imperial/tribunal mini-war.

Sehdara and I had interacted and conversed on so many different situations. I did notice that a conscious effort was made at any time that I was around and via other people telling me that the verbal deal we made was paying off. Prior to it, Sehdara was attacking and getting wanted in town, all the time. Afterward, long periods of time would go between them. Also, for the time being, Sehdara hadn't crossed that line of being occasional to criminal. I will agree, the rp was still very good, top notch.

As Chobijje. Sure, that time we went to Fort, I didn't have Barrier...but I felt a evil guy shouldn't beg for anything and was trying to impress you. + my ''quest'' with Bokru was a bit useless since...well...Never saw him again.

It's ok now since I can't play where I work now (Goddamn you, Ping) but I would have liked to taste Scion again after all those years and knew you guys were kinda empty. Only saw you, Xona, Bokru (once) and that's about it I think.

But you kicked ass and would have loved to hunt with you more. GLWYN!

Didn't we have an argument months ago where I said the exact same thing to you? LOL. Edited to add : Apparently not, that was Amberion.

Oh well, Sehdara was a good character. You and I fought a couple times, never killing each other, but you were definitely competent.

There are several approaches one can take to a character. What I think most people do is roll a character designed to join a specific cabal, with a role already planned out. Like, you roll a scion applicant knowing the angle you're going to take to try and get in. I get the feeling that this doesn't always work out for scions, because you have to do something special to be worthy.

When I rolled Mordwen, she was just chaotic evil. She had a backstory that eventually became a role entry, but it had nothing to do with nightwalkers and cc'ulgra, etc. She was just supposed to be an evil mage who hung out with demons.

However; everyone assumed I was trying to get into scion, even other scions including you, simply because I wasn't in any other cabal. This is actually because as a non-orderly evil conjurer scion is the ONLY cabal choice, so it makes perfect sense from an OOC perspective that I'd be wanting into Scion.

But IC, she'd never even heard of the prophecy, and was pretty much just being a scheming evil mage on her own time. And there weren't really any in-game events that pushed her towards trying to fulfil a prophecy that she'd never heard. Scions were essentially her only allies because of the universal assumption that she was a pledge, but IC she saw them more as peers - which is probably the attitude any serious candidate should have.

As a generic evil mage plotting to destroy the world she would have fit right in, but with no hooks into the specific roleplay required it would have made no sense to buy into those very specific things required for an induct which, as a player I still have no idea about.

You said "nobody spoonfed me", but your character was rolled to be motivated to dig into scion lore. If someone had even once actually prophesied to my character, explained what scion was about, etc, I would probably have had her buy into it even if it didn't make perfect sense simply because that's all the game has to offer that type of character. Instead it was all super-secret "not even going to tell you what the scion prophesy is".

In conclusion, players are perpetuating the 'forever alone' aspect of being a scion by not making any effort to sell their RP angles to anyone not already inside the cabal.

>game has to offer that type of character. Instead it was all
>super-secret "not even going to tell you what the scion
>prophesy is".

Yeah, Scion has this secrecy thing about their basic worldview that needs to basically be dropped. It's a cool idea, but it doesn't actually work for a number of reasons. Instead, they should be RPing specific threads in the big picture that they keep secret and which always change. That way they can still have legitimate shadowy/secret society culture without this open secret that everybody knows and probably legitimately.

A decent proportion of scions do basically drop the secrecy of the backstory, but the cabal as a whole should get on the "The endless night is not a secret" bandwagon.

It was a little hard rping not being bummed out that you were gone. Saersha hated you, but I loved you. You were the perfect enemy even though I couldn't have even dreamed of ever taking you down in a fight. The whole information war was so much fun and it really didn't have to be, you made it that way. Thank you for a scary, frustrating, intelligent enemy during something that could have been boring. You really made the whole ordeal a great experience.

Since it's not really a thing in game anymore, can I ask:
1. Did you commission the Akan king note?
2. Was the five sacred diamonds thing a test to see if Shamise and I were sharing information?

I kind of assumed the answer to both of them were yes, but gods be damned if you weren't a bold deceiver. I never knew what was true and what wasn't.

The Akan King stuff was all made up to get the Dwarf out of hiding, I made up one story for Shamise about Kahal having 5 sacred diamonds required to bring Arvam back that he was going to get killed over if he got captured, I made up a different story for the Trib about why he needed to send the information from the King, and I got the duergar Mercenary to pretend that he had run the dwarf into the Lyceum where it was hiding and waiting for rescue. The funny thing was it was all stemmed from 'Is there anything I can do to help you?' and Arvam saying in passing 'I've got a dwarf I need to find for Banya that helps her cook'. 'I'll take care of it.' LOL. It was fun.


Also, the 'Mage Plague' stuff was super fun. I swore Shamise to secrecy and told her that I was attempting to bring down Zhenyen from within the Chasm, and I told her that Zhenyen and Isozula were trying to create a mage plague and I didn't agree with their methods because I loved Magic. I said that if it was released it would destroy magic as we know it and we HAD to stop it. I got her to send a note to all asking for ANY information about Mage Plagues of the past so that I could 'stop' it. But in reality Zhenyen and Isozula had nothing to do with it and I was just using her to help me do my research. When you threatened me IC by saying you knew about the Mage Plagues and how I was working against Zhenyen and you were going to tell him I laughed so hard to myself IC and OOC and then gave Shamise hell for sharing the information with you since she was sworn to secrecy. To make matters even funnier I had already sent a note to Zhenyen telling him everything I told Shamise and that I was using her to do my research and if he heard anything about me 'working against him' from Heralds that was why. So IF you ever talked to Zhenyen about it he just chuckled. It was me just using Herald Lyceum connections for info, and actually I got some pretty good stuff from it.

I also had 3 Heralds at the time letting me know everything you said and did with them in regards to all of the above. Luckily you want all the glory for yourself and never really involved your cabal with the stuff. =P

I wasn't sure if you were lying about the Herald spies or not but I definitely shared information with the Heralds when they asked. I did encourage Heralds and other people I trusted to say that Corlx and I were extremely secretive and trying to subvert Shamise's wishes just because of you, so they may have been lying. I didn't send notes though, on the chance your spy claims were correct, and I kind of shut Nim out at one point because he started questioning me aggressively about it and had previously shown little interest, so it raised my eyebrow a bit. There was another Herald I suspected of being a spy, but I forgot the name. So much of my logins were spent in subterfuge mode at that time. You affected me so much, truly a testament. I wish I could have stood any kind of chance against you in pk, then I think we could have been the perfect enemies.

I never did approach Zhenyen, I had a Sehdara filter, anything concerning you was over analyzed, shredded, and pushed into the subconscious. I really just didn't know what was true and what wasn't concerning Sehdara. An endless amount of mystery and intrigue followed this character. Very well done.

I loved interacting with you, even though I knew how our fights would always end up going. I loved that you weren't just a murderall shifter, and actually had conversations of length and depth with me. Though I know there were frustrations because of who else was around when you and I often saw each other, you did a good job of keeping everything in check.

Great job and good luck with the next, I hope you find something that doesn't lose the funstick.

BTW, did you think I would return the mask after you killed me outside Hamsah when I came in to get whomever you were fighting to safety? It crossed my mind to not even ask about it, but figured we were "friendly" enough for enemies I'd give it a shot and see what happens. And I REALLY wanted to have the ID/desc of that item and couldn't believe I lost it before saving the damn thing. Very cool of you to take that chance.

Hate your goods, but that's how it works sometimes.

Still have fond (or not so fond) memories of your Provost thief and I getting into all sorts of mischief.

Alas you'll be missed I enjoyed the RP back and forth, and the verbal as well as physical spars we encountered. You'll surely be missed the depleting number of enemies is becoming quite bleh.

I kept hearing from almost everyone how good your RP was etc etc. Why did I NEVER get to see that? All I EVER got out of you was vitrol, thinly veiled ooc comments about gear/defiance/hiding etc.
At best, I got some IC trashtalk...

I tried quite a bit early on to get any sort of conversation out of you, but I never did. It even got to a point where I put you on ignore as soon as I saw you in the who list.

I was truly stumped since people kept talking about you and their interactions with you...

Anyway, you were a truly annoying (that's a good thing) and dangerous foe to have. I did enjoy fighting you, and when I finally managed to have you killed, baiting you and trapping you with that mace spec elf, that was a high point.

Anyway, I'd love to get some sort of explenation to your inability to RP with me.

We will agree to disagree about our interactions, your RP was pretty horrible and you overused ignore. That is my opinion and that's all I'm going with. Did not enjoy our interactions at all and you were an obvious fair weather player.

... I'm sorry to hear that. But I suppose we'll see once I'm gone. I doubt anyone else sees me as a fair-weather player, imm or player.

And quite frankly, we kinda agree on our interactions. They sucked.