Mayor Crux Lays out The OOC Intent of The Pillars
Mayor Crux gives a complete OOC rundown of the intent and plans for the pillars, the people they are looking for to help, what those people will be doing, and more!
Category: Towns
Topic: Wehnimer’s LandingDate: 03/17/2018 09:33 PM CDTFrom: FLAYED-ANGELSubj: Mayor's Minutes [RE: Official Mayoral Debates Tonight, A Call to Action.]Posted within the Lobby of Moot Hall is a Public Notice, written in pale ink on a glossy black parchment. The Notice is dated for the 17th of Charlatos in the Year 5118, and reads as follows:
Esteemed Citizens and Allies of the Landing, Later this evening, Judge Renpaw will be holding the official Electoral Debates with the two candidates for Mayor of Wehnimer’s Landing, Leafiara and Lylia. I would highly encourage everyone to come out and observe, or better yet offer up any questions they may have for discussion — this is an excellent way to learn more about the respective platforms of our two outstanding candidates, and a most enjoyable and thought-provoking time is guaranteed to be had. After reviewing, the Town Council has seen fit to approve the first step of my proposal to construct large-scale wards intended to protect our town from external assault, as was announced prior by Councilwoman and Steward of the Coffers, Alendrial DeArchon. While is this but the first small step of many far more arduous ones that will be necessary to complete such in its entirety, I am pleased to see that the Council has seen the wisdom in pursuing more proactive preparedness on this front. In order to complete this operation, we are currently seeking willing volunteers who may have ventured into the Shadow Realm (the extraplanar realm that was once the liminal host of Althedeus) in the past, either during the first incursion to defeat Althedeus or the secondary echo from which we rescued Acorn with the aid of the blood shaman, Teuriz. Anyone who has had exposure to this realm in the past may be of aid, if they wish, as well as anyone talented in the manipulation of mana or shadow energy such as Mages or Sorcerers, respectively; while we should have an ample number of volunteers already, I would certainly welcome any others who genuinely wish to participate in this endeavor for the betterment of our town. The Town Council has agreed to this proposal with the caveat that someone of their own appointing be allowed to supervise, which I find to be most agreeable; everything pertaining to this initial step of my proposal (save for a few aspects relating specifically to the underlying security of such) should and will be made publicly available for any law-abiding citizen in good standing to study or transcribe, in the event that any may still be harboring reservations or concerns stemming from a lack of knowledge on this topic, or merely have pertinent interest to the subject in question. You can request access to all public research and documentation related to such with the Town Clerk within Moot Hall, if you so desire… and I will be more than happy to continue personally answering any questions you may have. In conclusion, we will be conducting this relatively simple procedure whenever the Council is prepared to act, which will be most likely be in the late evening of either Restday the 18th or Volnes the 19th [Sunday or Monday night]. Any who wish are welcome to join us, but I will insist that proper protocols and decorum be observed by all present. While it is my steadfast estimation that this is absolutely not an inherently risk-encumbered or dangerous procedure — despite some unfounded misperceptions and disinformation to the contrary — we will proceed with the utmost reasonable level of caution, and I will advise that safety contingencies be in place in the highly unlikely event of any related or unrelated complications, as has been requested by some understandably concerned citizens. Signed and Sealed, – Cruxophim, Mayor of Wehnimer’s Landing
— Wheels & Skulls Department
You see Blood Mayor Cruxophim the Blood Reaver.
“Blood for the Blood Mayor! Skulls for the Skull Office!”[ Storyline: https://goo.gl/HNbwpC ]
[ Order of the Shadow: https://goo.gl/88Ojff ]
I’ll post some more information after the Debates tonight, but for now, you can find more detailed information here: [ https://goo.gl/pWjZUN ]
I think it would be fine to take the majority of the Phase One Synopsis therein as in-character public knowledge if you wish, as per the availability mentioned above; anyone who wants can presume to have “requested” a copy of said documentation at Moot Hall, as a requisite antecedent to using such for either participation or independent verification. While this is certainly an exploratory grey area, narrative-wise, I would assume that the proposal “checks out” in any reasonable capacity as per the Town Council‘s tacit agreement to endorse such.
— Wheels & Skulls Department
You see Blood Mayor Cruxophim the Blood Reaver.
“Blood for the Blood Mayor! Skulls for the Skull Office!”
[ Storyline: https://goo.gl/HNbwpC ]
[ Order of the Shadow: https://goo.gl/88Ojff ]
Part One: Imbuing the Pillars
The basic plan is to draw out some the tainted shadow energy that’s lingering within people who have been into the Shadow Realm, and infuse it into the three remaining ruined ashen bone pillars… thus converting them into black-whorled ashen bone pillars to match the other two. A small group of us experimented with this prior by collecting energy from the Shadow Realm into prepared keystones (magic batteries of a sort), and then imbuing said energy into the pillars through various means.
Even given the purity of the energy in question used for the initial experiments, this should be a relatively straightforward and simple task. The purpose behind involving more people (aside from, you know, just inclusivity whenever possible) is to reduce the burden for each individual; by effectively splitting the load, we will require less energy from each individual, and the safety and stability of the procedure — by virtue of the dealing with smaller increments — should increase accordingly. I’m framing this basically as “the more people we have participating, the safer it becomes.”
I want to be clear on something else as well: from a roleplaying perspective, a lot of IC research and thought has gone into this specifically in the interest of making it as safe and reliable as possible. Despite what you may think of him, Crux wouldn’t have proposed such to the Town Council without some reliable estimation that it wouldn’t blow up in everyone’s faces, because that would be counter-productive to the long-term goals that he’s trying to establish. That’s not to say Kenstrom won’t potentially get up to some shenanigans (you know how these things go), but I do want to be clear that several people who play “scholarly” or magic-oriented types have also reviewed, corrected, and otherwise participated in said research, and we’ve had several weeks to presumably hypothesize, formulate, test, and so on. This isn’t just Crux saying “Nah, it’ll be fiiiine… it won’t blow up!” and then wanting it to blow up, because Evil or whatever — the evidence (such as it is) should theoretically support these claims… at least, in whatever tentative shared imagination-space this exists in.
In the interest of transparency with this project, Crux has also arranged for anyone in good standing with the town to be able to “access” the majority of research (at least what pertains to this initial step), so if anyone wishes to contribute in future (or to have contributed), or to have independently reviewed and checked such, you’re welcome to say that your character has done so if it makes sense.
Basically all we’ll be doing for Part One is gathering people and travelling to the pillars one at a time, then attempting to imbue them with this “shadow” energy. As I said above, should be very clean-cut and straightforward… in theory. I’ll put out a call on the Amulet or whatever during #KST, so if you wanna help, you’re more than welcome to join us. The only “real” goal for this is to change the appearance of the remaining three pillars, as a narrative justification for Part Two.
What we’re looking specifically for:
• Anyone who’s travelled to either iteration of the Shadow Realm, or has had any exposure during Cross into Shadows, etcetera.
• Sorcerers, due to their ability to manipulate “generic” shadow energy.
• Wizards, due to their experience with manipulating and controlling mana directly.
• Practitioners of anything that could be vaguely construed as “blood magic”, whatever your flavor is.
What people will be actually doing:
• Most participants will be simply “funnelling” energy for key manipulators to use. You can do this through whatever MYCHARs or actions you want, that’s totally up to you, but that’s the basic roleplaying intent.
• Other people will be manipulating trace amounts of the shadow energy out of those who bear it, and weaving/pooling it to be imbued into the pillars. Sorcerers or others who roleplay “manipulating” shadows (as befitting spells like Cloak of Shadows, for example) would be ideal for this, but there are certainly others who have incorporated a similar overlapping “flavor” of such into their roleplay; if that’s your thing and you feel your character can do it, you’re welcome to aid in that.
• Lastly, certain key people with approved clearance (for security purposes) will be imbuing said harvested shadow energy into the pillars as the final step.
Part Two: Capturing Rone
This portion of the proposed two-part operation [see which: https://goo.gl/EYNmu8 ] is intended to be secret and not actually public knowledge — this is basically framed as a covert Militia operation and what-have-you, so that Rone doesn’t get wind of such. Still, if anyone’s keenly interested in participating and it somehow makes sense that your character might, please feel free to look me, Stormyrain, or Shinann up to discuss.
The basic premise of this part is to track/incapacitate the target, Rone, by using blood magic that is amplified by invoking the “fixed” pillars, and thus made inherently stronger and more effective by the aforementioned prepared narrative justification. Part of the reason I wanted to do this was to step back and try and set up an opportunity for others to use blood magic for something arguably more “positive” than just death and destruction, given that — from my understanding — there’s a school of thought that blood magic exists in two basic forms: “creative” and “destructive” types. Personally, I’d really like to see some of the others on the lighter side of things have the opportunity to demonstrate such… just to illustrate that such can be effective, too.
I’ll go into this more later maybe, but I want to leave it pretty open-ended for those involved to brainstorm their own approach; one basic suggestion is to use the wounds of the next person attacked by Rone to create a psychic/magical/metaphysical/whatever conduit back to him in order to track him, as using his own blood against him is — from my understanding — a volition of the some of the tenets of “creative” blood magic.
Here’s also a quick Q&A I put together to try and anticipate or answer previously asked questions from the various instances in which we’ve discussed such:
How do we know this is safe?
I’m working with what I’d consider a fairly reasonable assumption that most of what we’re doing has been thoroughly researched and tested by a fair number of intelligent characters (see above), with an arguable (albeit probably varied) amount of expertise in relative fields. Yes, we’re working with powerful magic that is largely not well understood, but we’re not actually “hacking” into that directly yet… this is essentially slapping a new coat of paint onto these bad boys in order to serve a far more incidental tertiary purpose for the time being. This should not in any way interact directly with the unholy magic the pillars were purposed for to begin with, and we are not “powering” them up nor reactivating that magic in any way. Or to use a real-world analogy: we’re basically getting a non-functioning motor somewhat operational while the car is still propped on the jack; we’re not planning on driving it anywhere yet, if that makes sense… that theoretically comes much later.
What of the five woman who were sacrificed to create them?
Crux, as you’ve probably surmised, has a purely utilitarian approach to this — he’s burdened with glorious purpose (heh), not sentimentality, and he’s approaching this from a place of logic and reason rather than emotion. Or as someone so eloquently put it: “What’s done is done, and nothing will undo this tragedy nor bring them back.” To him, the bone pillars are simply artifacts that could be put to important use instead of simply lying around in disrepair. Or if you prefer another approach, one might view this as serving the greater purpose of ultimately protecting the town; arguably, this act would be doing the women who were so unjustly sacrificed a far greater honor by helping them to play some small part in preserving whatever loved ones (and future generations) they may have left behind.
What if someone tries to sabotage this during the process?
While that’s certainly a possibility, this is set up so that the majority of participants will be simply manipulating mana or energy, which is rather hard to sabotage in any indelible fashion; mostly trusted individuals will be working with the pillars more directly, to reduce the chance of anything unseemly happening. While it would make sense to do this only with certain trusted individuals, I’d rather not do so at the cost of general inclusivity; these are just the risks we run when we try not to leave people out, especially as this should be a town effort.
What makes you think any of us understand how these pillars work?
That’s a complex question, of course. I certainly don’t like to presume anything, but for what it’s worth, Crux (and I’m sure others) have been intently studying the remnants of Grishom Stone’s methodology for the last several years, trying to make some sense of it all… whether it be to attempt to follow in his footsteps, or simply understand his works so that they might be countered. Obviously, it’s really up to Kenstrom to decide what level of efficacy those studies have had; I certainly wouldn’t even begin to presume that any of us have even approached the level of power that Stone has accumulated, but I would like to think that at least some semblance of understanding regarding the basic architecture and underlying principles of his work might be gleaned from such… and that from there, one can at least begin venturing into the realm of exploratory creative speculation (which is what this is). I’m also a big believer in player volition (within reason), and I generally prefer at least trying to be proactive in seeking out solutions that involve players directly, rather than always simply relying on GM NPCs to “solve” everything or hand us a solution; there are certainly numerous instances where such aid makes perfect sense within the narrative structure (and such does tend to be far more cohesive), but in my opinion, there are only so many times one can reasonably run to Teuriz or other NPCs before one wonders why no one among our diverse motley crew are able to figure anything out, heh.
Once this is done, what if someone tries to hijack these pillars for evil purposes?
Part of this process (and one that Crux has already done most of the prep for) involves encrypting access to the noablic fields that the pillars will generate once completed; this will be more important for later work, but for now, it’s a security measure to prevent just anyone from taking advantage of such. Basically this process insures that the pillars cannot be accessed for use without knowing protected access invocations, which serve as a “magical cipher” of sorts, so that there’s some kind of narrative justification for why just anyone can’t use the pillars if they’re no longer completely inert. Once completed, these access invocations will be entrusted to the Town Council and others of note, to prevent anyone with malicious intent from using them against us… because let’s be honest, it would be silly for us to do all that work just for that to happen.
— Wheels & Skulls Department
You see Blood Mayor Cruxophim the Blood Reaver.
“Blood for the Blood Mayor! Skulls for the Skull Office!”
[ Storyline: https://goo.gl/HNbwpC ]
[ Order of the Shadow: https://goo.gl/88Ojff ]