About a month ago, the balance is tipping heavily towards evil, and I spot two Nexus characters leveling on Kiadana with an evil character.

Now, for whatever reason Nexus attracts a lot of newbies and I'm generally mindful of that. That doesn't mean Daevryn's nice about it because that's not his RP, but generally the first time I call attention to someone violating the cabal dogma there aren't permanent consequences.

And, yeah, Nexus is a cabal where the "right" thing to do by the cabal dogma is constantly shifting, but that doesn't mean that there's a complete lack of standards either. So: I call attention to what they're doing wrong. They keep going, then talk it over and decide to make one more pass through Kiadana before splitting up because of the Balance.

The equivalent of that wouldn't fly in any other cabal, and at this point they know that I'm watching and that they're doing something wrong, so: uninduct, uninduct. I'm not anonymous for this.

Long story short, I decided to be nice about it and gave both an easy task for reinduction. I don't think they were out of the cabal even an hour. Your standard issue 'if you screw up again you're out again forever' boilerplate follows.

This is a lesson most people who play Nexus learn at some point, usually not the hard way if this can be considered the hard way: If you're Nexus, you really have to keep an eye on the balance. Generally speaking, new-Nexus balance doesn't shift that quickly -- you might be surprised by being teamed up with good and reaching the "good is slightly winning" state, but you almost never find yourself teamed with good in the "good is extremely winning" state unless you're really inattentive. This is just part of playing Nexus, just like you develop a much sharper awareness of which items are magic when playing Battle, what the law allows while playing Tribunal, and so on.

(I also give out little perks to Nexus folk who get it right.)

That brings us to tonight when one of the aforementioned two Nexus characters was on the wrong side of the Balance again.

I asked on cb for an explanation. Some of the other Nexus characters talk about it a bit.

No answer. Oh, an orc has the character in question spinebroken. Give it a few more minutes. Nothing.

Probably at this point it should be uninduction but I decide to be a little merciful about it. I take the vanguard power and declare this the last warning.

A while later they seem to notice the missing power for the first time and get a pray telling me to #### myself.

Pretty much anyone who's been playing the game for a while understands that's not how you get what you want. Uninduct.

A stream of profanity-laden prays, none of it remotely accepting any kind of responsibility follows, one declaring that they're done with being caballed and plan to just explore and hoard gear instead. Fine, you've given up on your ethos, take the betrayer penalties too. At this point I probably should have just denied the character and tossed a cool-down temp ban instead but for some reason I'm still trying to pull punches.

We keep freaking out.

I point out that this isn't the first time I've uninducted this character for completely ignoring the balance. Because of this, at this point I assume it's obvious who I am, but I guess it's hard to notice these things through a haze of rage-o-hol.

I point out that there are consequences for raging and cussing at an immortal that busts on you for ignoring your cabal RP. Have we gotten to a point where I'm a ####wad for trying to enforce the minimum RP standards in a cabal? If so, then fine, I'm a ####wad.

So beware: if you're in a cabal I'm running and you repeatedly do the exact opposite of what the cabal rules and standards indicate that you should do and you swear at me for fifteen minutes after the second time I call you on it, your character will eventually end up maimed. I'm mad with my unlimited power.

1) Nexus, by its very nature, demands a certain amount of immortal oversight (or something automated coded up to crack on bad Nexus, and maybe that's the next step) since there are very few actions which are bad for a Nexus character in every circumstance. That is to say, it's obvious to everyone that a storm giant that loots an elf's corpse on Eastern Road may not be living up to his alignment; it's obvious to anyone who's played an Empire character for a while when another character is breaking Imperial Law, and so on. On the other hand, if I'm the only Nexus on I probably can bash down whoever I like and lie about where the balance sits.

2) Enforcing cabal standards, rules, or any kind of behavioral standards are one of those areas where, as an immortal, you really just cannot make everyone happy. If I crack on the Tribunal who murders unwanted people in Galadon, that guy gets pissed at me. If I don't (regardless of whether it's because I chose not to, because I missed noticing, or because I was thousands of miles away from my computer), the people who are the victims of that behavior get pissed at me.

3) Possibly the most frustrating part of being on staff for a game like this are players who, when caught doing something they shouldn't be, either blame you for what they did wrong or immediately try to point out something another player did that they think is worse. Even I have way better things to do with my time than bust on someone for no good reason.

Enforcing cabal standards, rules, or any kind of behavioral standards are one of those areas where, as an immortal, you really just cannot make everyone happy. If I crack on the Tribunal who murders unwanted people in Galadon, that guy gets pissed at me.

There's a long paper trail about why this character was uninducted outducted, re-inducted, and re-outducted, and it all seems to check out. Given that this was a reasonable IC interaction where the player in question immediately responded:

(Name) prayed for: Yeah, so whoever the imm was who took away vanguard...you can go #### yourself
(Name) prayed for: Yeah yeah eat ####
(Etc. Lots of these.)

I think the subsequent events were very kind, and I don't think anyone would have blinked if the character was just denied and the player given some time off.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

nt

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