Sat Jul 26 02:26:51 2008

At 1 o'clock AM, Day of Deception, 23rd of the Month of the Dark Shades
on the Theran calendar Cyles perished, never to return.

Aww man, I was really hoping for a chance to get that skin back
you took. Hehe. That was a religious gift. You bastard. j/k
Nice work with you and the fire giant though. I wasn't expecting him right then. A big ol' "Oh no!" moment for me.

As for a new kid I have one phrase for ya:
Tag-team sleeping

Good luck. and 'grats

Read the Gameplay forum, not much to really say beyond two quick things...

-Sorry Beroxxus, I really had hopes for the class but after awhile...it just didn't mesh. Best I could do would be to steal everything from someone after I knocked them out, which any thief could do - had higher hopes for emetic poison but it just wouldn't work well enough with a mix-path thief.

-To all the Imperials that tried to charge me 20-50 gold for the Bloodoath, you need to get your priorities straight. 90% of the time there was 0-2 Imperials on and the Codex was never around - it definitely wasn't a strong time for Empire. When the Empire is hurting, the bloodoath shouldn't cost anyone anything....I had 125 gold to donate but I wasn't going to pay any of you a dime to get in. I can understand shoving the oath down on people by threats/killing, but not a willing person and saying "sorry, you have to pay the toll". It's a dumb thing that got started (like library reading for villagers)...

Beyond that, it was fun to get back into the game albeit it probably won't last since my wife is due here in a few days with our first. We'll see though, maybe I'll pull an Abernyte

You taking the Oath is worth more to you than it is to an arbitrary Imperial.

If I ask for gold and you agree, the result is "you're in empire and I have some gold."

If I ask for gold and you disagree, there are two possibilities. First, you find some other Imperial who'll induct you for free. In that case, I'm not any worse off because I asked for gold; you still joined the cabal. Alternately, you could just say screw it and never take the Oath. In that case, you're probably not the sort of person I would want as a cabal mate anyway.

So there doesn't seem to be a big down-side to asking for gold.

I've always felt like offering the Oath should sorta be a requirement for any Citizen, especially if someone is willing to offer it. The goal of Empire is world domination and subjugation of all Theran citizens. This is best accomplished by someone who is willing to serve the Empire.

Does this mean there's no viable roleplay reason to be the guy who asks for gold from Oaths? No. But if I was, say, one of the Council, and heard of a Citizen in my sect who was doing it, I'd likely demote them for not making the Empire stronger when the opportunity presented itself.

I can see that. If I knew my Sect leader had that sort of policy, then yeah, I would probably offer the Oath for free. The potential profit isn't worth the risk of a demotion.

But if I was pretty sure my Sect leader didn't have that policy, or if I had no sect leader...or one who rarely logged on...then I might ask the would-be Oath to pay me. Esp. if I think the guy is likely to do it.

Its always been if the oath is going to be a member of your sect then it is free. If you start giving out oaths to other sects willy nilly then you are actually strengthening other sects.

And my only recent Imperial was Blade, so I wasn't so much worried about strengthening other Sects, as Blade was so far and away more powerful than the others.

I wanted allies and/or lowbie retrievers, dammit.

BUT if an advancement was going to cost *me* gold, I always tried to get that gold from the person I was going to advance.

...I had even Shadow members requiring gold, not just other sects. I don't ever see charging the same Sect members unless I had big problems with them. With most of the time there being no imperials, you would figure that even a Blade/Black/Divine would want a set of eyes from a Shadow. It roughly took me 20 hours to get the Oath from someone who wouldn't charge me, then they even said "if people ask, I charged you 40 gold". Just seems like a bunch of crap to me.

NT

"I've always felt like offering the Oath should sorta be a requirement for any Citizen, especially if someone is willing to offer it."

Leaders have been anathema'd for not giving the oath freely. Yay for consistency?

The first two weeks 'The Baby-moon' is fine because your wife is tired and the baby is tired so both sleep a lot. After two weeks it gets more tricky but late nights is best. If your wife is breast feeding or not, offer to do the last feed of the night at about 11pm with the bottle. Wife goes to bed with baby after feeding at about 8 and you have until 11 (with any luck) and then feed baby and have another hour or so before heading to bed. You get brownie points for giving the wife a rest, and a longer sleep than 3 hrs and you get to Mud!

It's all good.

-----Abernyte

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