(Celestines): Amaru says, "Why do you all suck so much. Seriously, I hate you losers."

Maybe that had something to do with it?

(The above was made up, for those unfamiliar with the concept of sarcasm)

I'm serious, Ixion! Gah, I'm dedicated, I'm effective. What more do you people NEED? And no I won't join Isune's Order, I know what you're up to.

I myself am not sure how I won over you like that. (I kinda wanted you to beat me.. ) At the same time.. well.. c'mon, you'd rather it be me than her, no?
Anywho, it does give me a lot of incentive to try to improve, even if albeit slowly, to a much more effective combatant. IC I've tried to never really shirk responsibility, and so far it's not the easiest job in the world. Fighting has never been my main interest, but at the same time I have no problem serving guild or city in whatever way they feel they need me most.
*cough*
As for the original point though, ya.. I don't see demesnes getting scrapped or even heavily downgraded, but.. (do I actually agree with Silvanus here?) I also do firmly beleive that like statues and guards, existing demesnes should be cleared out of a village when it goes into play. This would make it harder to defend villages you already have and want to retake, ya.. but it would also make it a bit more viable to try to have a fair fight from the start. Then it would come down to which mage group comes in first to control the area, and they could battle it out some.. maybe we'd see more interesting mage-vs.-mage fighting, instead of just one guy demesning up a place, hanging out with his buddies and owning whoever is dumb enough to walk in. *shrug*
Another thought, maybe the Magic common skill could also give people some slight immunities to demesne effects and stuff? Resilience is pretty cool with damage prevention and venom shrugging, and the illusion detection aspect has been tweaked in arts too... so.. make Magic more usefull and then anyone who could put credits into it could buy a little relief from demesne's somehow? Maybe just something simple like a little % chance of ignoring summons and imbedded/infused affects?

I've no problem with you Galv, I admire you. I just felt a little defeated. I put a lot into combat.

It's funny how defeat can do that.

Okay, so the Nil Grim does have 4 attacks: he sinks its fangs into you for 60 damage, without armour or putrefaction.

1) Chill
2) Fear
3) 60 damage
4) Blackout

Nil Grim must be bugged, cause I can't imagine why it would be sub par for so much to the other champion pets.

...60 damage? WHAT? :/ Okay, Nil Grim is the worst, followed closely by Patchou (blackout is just that good), followed by Handmaiden.

The handmaiden is disgustingly overpowered. =/

Agreed, there's definately been some errors, or bias, when they designed the pets.

Demenses play too great a role in influencing, especially when you can have a demense setup and activated prior to the revolt, or seconds afterward.

Maybe that if once a village revolts, all demesnes present in that village, would be dissolved, and the taint/flood/forest disappearing...would fix it? It does take a while to completele demesne up a village.

Doesn't really take that long. First person to get there basically gets it set up.

not exactly...if its already demesned you just need to meld...
if its someone else's demesne you need to run around and break it and then meld

No, not exactly. If there was one Geomancer and three Hartstone, the three Hartstone would do it faster even if the Geomancer had 5 minutes head start.

You could make the un-influenced villagers go around un-tainting/flooding/foresting the rooms until they are influenced, that'll make it alot harder to

I like that idea. Currently influencing villages now revolves entirely around removing and replacing demesnes, not around actual influencing. It is quite irritating and frustrating.

One problem with that is that Hartstone actually have a demesne skill called "Influence" which essentially gives them a boost to Influencing creatures within their demesne (Faeling Hartstone with High Magic? *drools*) And if they put up a demesne in the room to influence, and then the damn mob wiped it before they even got equilibrium back, there might be a problem

Hartstone can't take highmagic.

Actually, that's only a half-true statement.

While an official guildmember cannot take Highmagic, if a druid quits Hartstone, they can forget Lowmagic and learn Highmagic without any penalty aside from the lost lessons of Lowmagic. However, you lose the ability to take Poisons, Herbs, or Alchemy as trade skills when you quit the guild as well. EDIT: (lose the ability to pick them from SKILLCHOICE, but not to use them or put lessons into them, I mean)