zomg I love you Ialie.

And, Shiro, you're not innocent. You were the one getting on Harbingers asking all of the Serens to join with Celest vs Magnagora. And that's why it was reverted to Panda prior to Bricriu getting the final say.

I wish people wouldn't misquote Me, I said that influencing did not require violence. That is all I said.

I do hope this teach Serenwilders about the "why aren't we snuggly with Magnagora" and "why don't you let me sell bromides and combat elixirs to those cute viscantis". And also explains to Magnagorans why Serenwilde doesn't like them and tends to go with Celest.
On the other hand, I wouldn't have expected less of Magnagora. They're expansive, ready to grab the chance to empower themselves and expand the Taint. They are all for survival of the strongest. The Goddess who dies was
an anti-taint goddess and a goddess from their enemy city. Besides, thanks to this death they now have a crazy tainted Goddess to play with and trick into creating Glomdoring. I mean, they should be almost celebrating, if it wasn't the world had just been saved.

Actually, Isune wasn't anti-taint. She'd snuggle with me all the time while I was in Mag =p Yes, I tainted Isune!

So, why is Stangmar still a Magnagoran? From all the complaints about him on the forums, complaints made by people from all sides, he seems to be more troubles than he's worth.

I mean, after all this, you'd think he would get kicked out of the city... or am i missing something?

As soon as I saw the villages uninfluenced I thought... let's get those as soon as this event is done. Hence the request for them to be demesne'd in preparation. Blame me.

Okay, I blame Amaru... And Magnagora. Really, if everyone was actually going to go influence the villages they previously had Magnagora and Serenwilde would've not end up brawling. Maybe the Divines should've had left some unkillable blobs in every village avoiding influencing until Glomdoring arrive or uninfluenced every village to delay Influencers.

Still, yes everyone is right that Magnagora took the opportunity. It is nothing to be proud of, that action could've had crossed the head of many others. But if Serenwilde had agreed with someone (Magnagora?) to simply recover the villages they lost, then couldn't they at the very least keep their end of the bargain? Nah, a scavenger needs to eat... No opportunity can be wasted.

Once in a post a few weeks ago I wrote how I sort of respected Erion for the way he plays a villain, and it might shed some light to elaborate.

Playing a good villain is one of the hardest RP challenges there is. However, playing a bad one is perhaps the easiest RP. In almost any PVP game where players take on the roles of villains, one hopes they'll be good villains. I don't mean Nazis, though that'd be an improvement on some; I mean Darth Vader or Lex Luthor. With class, with clear purpose, with depth and sophistication and complexity, and enough reason behind what they do to suggest that maybe it's not simple pathological malice but simply a cause with which one does not agree.

But usually one's hopes are dashed. That's the most challenging thing there is to play, and the alternative is so simple to play, that even if you're lucky enough to get a bunch of people who really want to play a good villain and have the talent to carry it off, the slide into mediocrity is almost inevitable. Doubly so if the villains are being successful, since that draws more people, and the standards can't be maintained.

I never saw Magnagora as quite Darth Vader, but for a while, I didn't see them as wife-beating trailer trash that set homeless people on fire, either. Little by little, though, they've been heading for that latter end. Brutality trumps subtlety; deception is limited to "let's break our agreements!"; purpose gradually becomes absent. They just seem to be amused by simplistic acts of wickedness and suffused with an inflated sense of power. They're all swagger and no class.

What's worst is that those people who could really do the villain thing are still there, still trying, and largely seem not to have noticed, or have rationalized away, the way their efforts are being suborned and robbed of impact. I respect how they're trying, and I respect the talent they're showing, and in a way maybe they're getting the rawest deal of all, since they're being made ineffectual and most of them don't even know it.

I have some small hope that Glomdoring will be the classy, sophisticated, purposeful villain we now lack. But that hope keeps dwindling as the days go by. Not that I'm eager for Serenwilde to be locked in an endless war, mind you; after the last few weeks, I'm perfectly eager to spend some time on all the other things the game has to offer, but the situation we were left in smells like anything but a hope of some peaceful time to rebuild. But if we have to be stuck in an endless struggle, I just hope it's against someone that's got something behind the grimace.

I just hope if Glom comes it doesn't mean another 10 IC years of endless killing, fighting, and not being able to move anywhere out of your city/commune without some "muhahaha" guy kills you. Or tries to "enlight" you via judgement or boiling or whatever.

I was thinking. The leadership in Celest are always spouting stuff about how the Taint is still controlled by Kethuru and how it lies and corrupts and is evil.

1. Magnagora embraces the Taint and used it to fight Kethuru.
2. The representatives of the Light telling us that it was controlled by Kethuru is a lie. Magnagora embraces the Taint and has never lied to me.
3. Taint is no longer controlled by Kethuru and is controlled by people. Therefore not evil.

So the Light representatives lied to me, and the Taint turned outto be what the Taint embracers said it was. Simply a power.

So I'm starting to think:

Taint Me

Maybe it was the way that Magnagora was behaving towards Celest (Serenwilde now, too), that made them look like the bad boy. And the ugliness some find in the Taint and the way the Tainted use it as evil.

But, you must notice something.

Kethuru is alone, He doesn't care about it's fecal matter (Magnagora and the Taint). So to survive Magnagora had to help the rest.

Killing tentacles in the last push by Viravain, I was killed.

Thankfully, and I do thank them, I was rezzed by Celest at the Pool of Stars.

While I was sitting there, they began discussing (and only a few) about getting back Delport as soon as it was influencable by putting a few people not important to the event there. Both sides pondered it to some detail, only one was able to pull it off.

It makes sense we would seize the opportunity, though I wasn't there. Everyone already calls us the evil city, so it's not like we are gonna shake that roll. A god that most of us care nothing about died, and we saw a weak point that we could probably exploit. We were already gunning for the village weeks in advance, much like the Delport experiment, so it's not a massive surprise.

Things are changing. Neither government is stupid.

The entire point, Manjanaia, has always been that the Taint is not only an affront to those lost to our realm, particularly the lost denizens of Shallamar, but is potentially -extremely- dangerous should the powers of Kethuru ever be loosed in full force. We were lucky in this instance that Kethuru's power was restricted to the manipulation of his vessel Viravain. But were more seals broken and his power began to leak into the world...can you imagine how overpowered a Geomancer's demesne would be if Kethuru were controlling it?

This event currently has me very depressed.

Waaaaah.

A Geomancer is part of what Kethuru would consider fecal matter. Kethuru doesn't care about fecal matter. If Geomancers or Tainted alike would really get more powerful with a higher presence of Kethuru in the land, why didn't they oppose us during the event? Why not help Kethuru break through?

Yeah those Geomancers would be in for a serious nerfing then.

Mmm... poison gas doing passive aeon, asthma, slickness and 2000 damage every tick.

With Kethuru at the helm, all of them would lose their free will. He does not give a darn about them as free-willed worshipers, but he would use them as literal puppets. This is just my take on it.