I don't know, I just think that that part of the problem we're facing now is that both celest and serenwilde have very strong reasons to be against magnagora (though i find the opposition to taint more powerful than the opposition to the evil that tainted beings may or may not commit), while serenwilde and particularly celest have lesser animosity between each other.

If we don't really know much about light other than that it is sugar and spice, maybe its time to learn that the light is about enlightening people to the glory of civilisation and higher arts, spreading peace and unity throughout the basin. Serenwilde would then be the backwater savages that need to be treated as lesser beings. In time, there could be a predominantly evil city (that may or may not be tainted) arise that could then directly challenge celest because of a direct opposition to the Light.

Elryn, that is only true because certain people in your commune want that to be true.

As far as 'what' the Light is, well, that explanation, as we've seen, can vary. It's our religion, it involves the ideals of the Supernals, but, I mean, as far as an explicit answer goes, who knows? What is God?

We hate the Taint because it -has- warped beings of the Light before. We have history on our side.

No, I don't believe it is.

Serenwilde to Magnagora - against taint (and hence magnagora) because its unnatural, it wiped out a commune, and it destroyed two great spirits.

Celest to Magnagora - against magnagora (and hence taint) because the city is evil, because the taint wiped out a cosmic plane and elemental plane.

Magnagora to Serenwilde - against Serenwilde for self-preservation, and because it represents the opposite of the perfection embodied by the taint.

Magnagora to Celest - against Celest for self-preservation, and because they envy the light.

Serenwilde to Celest - blames Celest for indirectly causing taint, though the new city has no directed harm towards Serenwilde.

Celest to Serenwilde - may have some slight problems from when Moondancers didn't save Old Celestians, though Serenwilde has no directed harm towards Celest.

Clearly, the reasoning behind conflict with Magnagora is based on extreme idealogical differences, whereas Celest and Serenwilde really only have politics and history to differ about. Light and natural worship aren't really related to each other... they can quite happily coexist at this point.

In my opinion, the Light is merely pure supernatural energy, of a pseudo-harmonious nature. Whatever the Supernals, Emanations represent, are secondary in my opinion. Meaning that it was this complete pure energy that shaped those creatures in the first place. The Taint, is just a corruption of this pure energy, a mirror-reflection, that twisted and changed everything that was Light onto something else, meaning that the Taint is discord rupturing the rumored harmony the Light provided.. But, in my opinion, both energies, the Taint and the Light choose to engulf everything else, so both Light and Taint should be treated the same and eradicated at once.

I'm making small edits to your list because I don't want to rewrite everything.

Serenwilde to Magnagora - against taint (and hence magnagora) because its unnatural, it wiped out a commune, and it destroyed two great spirits.

Celest to Magnagora - against taint (and hence magnagorat) because the city is evil, because the taint wiped out a cosmic plane and elemental plane.

Magnagora to Serenwilde - official responce from Ardrak "Cut it or Taint it."

Magnagora to Celest - against Celest for self-preservation, and because they envy the light. (envy the light? HA!) Magnagora is against Light, and Hence Celest, becase the light is weak.

Serenwilde to Celest - blames Celest for bringing taint to the Basin, Celest is mainting its empiralisitc ways not seeing the folly of ignoring the Great Spirits and warry of Celest's attempts to push the Light onto others.

Celest to Serenwilde - Resentfull towards moondancers and the like who clearly don't care for the lives of the people outside thier own circles. Not quite Tainted and so perfect targets for teaching the Light and spread its cause into the wilderness.

I'm rather shocked that people don't see the intense ideological differences between a Cosmic based City and an Ethereal based Commune. Only current politics of individuals have bridged this gap.

I don't really understand your cosmic/ethereal reference, but its not really important here. I still see my estimation of animosity as more objective in some ways. I realize Magnagorans want conflict between Serenwilde and Celest, so do I. But that doesn't change the way things are now.

My point is that Celest's philosophy doesn't clash whatsoever with Serenwilde's. Similarly, although Serenwilde doesn't particularly like or trust cities because they've gone against the spirits, they don't represent an imminent threat to our survival. We can change rp to -make- it that way, sure (and some of us are trying), but on purely philosophical grounds, we don't have extreme cause for conflict.

Oh, and I was using someone else's point about the envy reason for magnagora against celest. If thats not it, all I can see is the general expansion that magnagora wants, which is not specifically focused on celest. Which seems to be the same as what you give for magnagora's animosity towards serenwilde.

Serenwilde, a nature based commune follows the great spirits. They seek self preservation and have no desire to truly expand or spread their ideals to anybody else. They only ask, that people do no hurt them or the things they hold dear.

Celest, just like Magnagora has this idea that thier 5 Cosmic Creatures, are the correct and only way to truly live life. Anybody who does not see the beauty and power in that way of life needs to be destroyed. The Light is just as unatrual as the Taint is. In EVERY WAY. The Light changes people also, only the change is mostly on the inside, while the Taint changes mostly on the outside. Fae brought to the Light become Cherubs.

If you understood the dynamics bewtween Cosmic and Ethereal (which I don't fully understand at all) I think it would become obviously clear how Unatural the Light is, and how anybody who follows the great spirits would not want to be a part of it.

Both the Light and the Taint are expansionist ideas.

I'm not so sure about that... I have a feeling Serenwilde would like the whole basin to be covered in forests - we just aren't militant about it.

An internal change isn't unnatural. Following love and beauty isn't unnatural. Its not Serenwilde philosophy, but its not antithetical to us. You can follow both Light and worship the nature spirits.

The Fae we hate being changed to cherubs, but that is not an 'internal' or philosophical change.

Maybe in the real world your argument is valid. But in the World of Lusternia, COSMIC and ETHEREAL are Ananethema of eachother. They don't mix, you can't do both.

People break rules all the time, but the nature of the beast is that they don't mix.

Serenwilde could just as easily see the Modern Taint as an Evolved form of nature, that only the Old Taint was bad. But just as plants learn to adapt and survive, so the world is adapting to become like the Taint, which is the new way that everything should be, so it can survive better.

My argument has nothing to do with Ethereal or Cosmic planes. I'm talking about philosophies, the way people of the three cities think.

I get the feeling you're trying to convince me that my character should hate the light as much as he does the taint. Don't bother, he already feels that way. But OOC, when I step back and look at the interactions between all the cities, there is a very obvious imbalance to me.

I'm not trying to convince you of playing your charachter in any direction.

I'm trying to convince you that the Planes.. what the people on those planes teach, and how they intereact with eachother... ARE the philosophies of the cities and communes.

I find the fact that you are seperating the planes from the cities and communes a mistake, which is leading to an incomplete picture of what the philosophies mean.


I don't know how to explain this in any better way but to use a RL example.

In Judaism, our tradition have lots of nasty things to say about "star worhipers" which is the most polite way to talk about idol worshipers. One the face of it, it looks like its just an argument of "my god is better than your god." And thats a very common misconception.

However, the Jewish texts are very indepth and clear about what is wrong with star worship, and the conflict is not about believing in the "wrong god." The Problem these texts have with it, is that you can choose which god to believe in, in the first place. Which means that in essence, instead of you serving that god, you are actually tyring to have that god serve you. (In Judaism, a Jew's "point in life" is to be what is called a "servant of Hashem (god)"

Its that point of orgin that is the cause of the conflict, not the subsequent difference that emerges from that point.

So to in Lusternia.

Celest's point of Orgin is Celestia and water.
Magnagora's point of Orgin is Nil and earth.
Serenwildes' point of Orgin is Ethereal Serenwilde.

Any conflicts between those planes, results down the line as conflicts between those cities.

Alright, then because none of the Ethereal says anything about the Light, we ignore it. Yes, Fae can be captured by Celestia, but there is nothing on Ethereal that says this is bad, only the rp we ourselves have developed. We can capture them back, and no harm is done.

By this argument, we still have no problem with the light.

Supernatural and unnatural both basically mean the same thing.

Only because of Real World ideologies do we impose a good connotation on one, and a bad on the other.

in our world we label anything supernatural as a good thing that comes from outside our world, and anything unanutral as something People made or did.

The Light is as unnatural as the Taint. If Ethereal realm is happy with unnatural things comming around trying to change it and remove all the naturalness from it, yeah I guess you have no problems.

How do I know they are Unnatural? Because the source of the teachings of the Taint is Nil, and the source of the teachings of the Light is Celestia. Both are on Cosmic planes.

The Cosmic plane and Ethereal planes are Anathenma of eachother. Its in an events post, you can go read it. I'm under the impression that any plane above ehtereal would be considered "Unnatural" Thats why the Elemental plane is above the Etheral plane. If we used common understandings of the elements, we would have the Elemental planes be closest to Prime, then Ethereal as thats less "physical"

Its true I'm actually making a few assumptions here, maybe a Divine could correct me, because this has nothing at all to do with anything my charachter thinks. I don't think Daganev could get past the concept of different planes lets alone these things.

If you want to argue semantics like this (since I don't remember bringing up supernatural), let's do so. The Ethereal plane is supernatural. Thus, it is unnatural. Thus, the nature spirits that dwell there are unnatural. Thus, we should kill/maim/destroy them, right? Of course not. Words are often imprecise for concepts that are as abstract as what we are discussing, it is often a good idea to avoid taking literal meanings too seriously.

Actually, the events post said that cosmic and nature magics don't mix. Which certainly makes sense. Yes, the two planes themselves are totally different, but I'm not sure I would call them 'opposite'. I like to think of them as a gradual scale from physical to pure energy. Ethereal is basically the 'spiritual' reflection of the physical world. Cosmic planes are much higher, closer to pure unbound energy and unworldly in any form at all. The 'anathema' of Nil would be Celestia, as it is currently implemented.

Again I don't make the connection spiritual = unnatural.

guess we will just have to disagree then, because I see Ethereal as the definition as Natural, its the source of everything Forest like.

And anything spiritual, i.e cosmic is beyond natural.

to quote the events post...

Thus ends the saga of the Tainting of the Fae, a hard and heartfelt
lesson on what happens when cosmic and nature magics, each anethema to
the other, merge together with unexpected and unstable results.

Isn't that what I said about the events post?

Note that Moondancers are the spiritual liasons of the forest communes. Why? Because we bridge the *Ethereal* and Prime planes. Anyway, you're right that we'll have to agree to disagree, as this is way off topic.

I still believe that Light is essentially imbalanced in the current world, but one day we might have an evil city that can fulfil the anti-light stance.

Edit: By the way, I may be bringing in my RL convictions here, because I don't see spirituality and nature as necessarily exclusive. Though, I think we might be verging on a whole different philosophical discussion there.

Why does the light oppose the Taint, and why should Serenwilde not like the light?

These are both answered already by teh statement that the Light is expantionist. In the eyes of the Supernals, the Fae are inferior. In fact, it's looked at that anything that is not within the Light is corrupt. The Serenes are people under shadow(not in darkness, but not in light), while the Taint is darkness, and thus opposite to the light. So, in order for everythgin to be proper and good, the taint shoudl be erradicated, so that things and peoepl are no longer covered in darkness, and the Seren and Fae shoudl be converted, so that they become proper.

That's about as mush as I can come to explain it, as I see it.

Let's just conclude Daganav (common sense) is right and Elryn (ooc bias) is wrong, everyone happy!

Aye, it would be a good point, and Daganev mentioned it... but I haven't actually observed this attitude in those that the follow the Light. It's why I was curious whether its teachings encourage such things.

Thorgal...