Remember who those Merians are, they helped in the creation of the Gorgogs that hurt Celest. Sure they've tried to fix it by sealing them away, but it doesn't change what they did in the first place.

That being said, they don't follow Celest, they don't follow the Light therefore Celest has no reason to officially protect them. Those whom wish to defend their Merian brothers are free to do so, but it is them personally doing it and Celest will not come to their aide if they are slain for a personal action.

From the OOC side, limiting your whole city to killing rats is a good way to keep yourself weak.

Err.. they created the Gorgogs as part of a project that was being run by Celest, didn't they?

That's like putting the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project to death for mass murder for simply creating the atomic bomb. Your logic is completely off there, Hajamin.

Sounds like a good plan to me.

Not to mention that nearly everyone in New Celest descends from the people who worked on, supported, or didn't do anything to stop the Cosmic Hope project, so they don't have room to talk against the Arysians. Besides, killing your own race isn't something anyone who isn't roleplaying a psychopath should do casually. It's not realistic to assume that a merian can just happily stroll through the isle killing merians and whistling innocently without at least feeling a little bit of empathy for all the poor merians. And on the OOC side of things, RP > Convenience. There are still Gorgogs, the Moors, and Astral critters to hunt if you don't want to slaughter the poor merians.

Actually, lets compare them to Vietnam Vets. Still so eager to sentence them all to death for fighting an unfair war?

Plus, aren't these merians the descendants of the ones who created the Gorgogs? Not the actual creators themselves? So, actually, its like killing the children of vietnam vets, or grand children.

Again with the god damned OOC ethics. Can you kinda stop that please?

You can kill members of your own race without being a psychopath. HUMANS did it all the time. HUMANS do it all the time. Are each of them psychopaths?

Hajamin, this stuff is tiring me out. Can you please go over the last year worth of bullcrap Celest aims and tell me, honestly, the admin didn't hand Celest a bum RP framework? Its stuff like this that makes me want to go Magnagoran because the RP is so freaking much simpler (ie "Take it. Take it all.")

The ones who stroll through a neighborhood killing every other human they see - yes, I would call that psychopathic. That is what you're talking about when someone is bashing the Merians - someone waltzing through the area butchering everything in sight.

I so agree with you Morik. People who try and impose OOC beliefs in a fantasy world based on everything immoral about the OOC world.. need to go play monopoly.

Where do you people that think that out-of-character ethics do not belong inside Lusternia get this from?

Isn't Lusternia a role-playing fantasy world for you?
Maybe it isn't. Perhaps Merians are nothing more than xp on legs. Perhaps your character feels that its all just a game... becuase perhaps you character doesn't feel any differently to you.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong on this, but that seems to be the impression you're giving.

Kaileigh, you were one of the best Roleplayers in the game. I'm going to miss your quick wit and your eloquent writing.

Because there's multiple views on things - some are influenced by OOC ethics (eg "racism is bad"), some are influenced by IC mechanics (eg Taint vs Light, Natural vs Changed forest.)

We can't be the perfect roleplayers: its hard to completely separate your player morals, ethics, feelings from IC. Annabelle managed to do it to get credits, and look at how y'all viewed her /player/. Think about Thieving: people complain that IC thieving is actually an OOC effect. If you all were perfect roleplayers we'd have no trouble with thieves as nothing stolen would affect you OOC. IC you'd be sad, OOC you'd just be whistling and going about your business. I know of people who have /cried/ because of an IC relationship breakup, or come on IRC to complain about IC manipulations - in fact, one of my Achaean characters was going to persue Twilight (God of Darkness) but realised that manipulating players in an RP environment would lead to actual OOC sad people. I couldn't do that to them. Look, I'm now a "bad" RPer.

Anyway. this kind of stuff shouldn't make an effect on our IC decisions, but it does. Whats WRONG with killing Merians? /i/ am not a merian. /i/ have no ties to these merians who haven't adopted the Light as their own. /i/ hate everything about Project Cosmic Hope and it shows the folly of persuing Power without balance. So, please explain to me why I my character should care about a bunch of Merians living in the location of a failed project which left us with that freaking dimensional rift?

They could always, you know, get the hint and move. That way the quest may stop being doable and the dimensional rift can stay shut.

Then I guess we're really, really freaking lucky this is an alternative realm where your defintion of "psychopath", which I share in the real world, hasn't got the same kind of effect IC.

Because, think about it. If you knew you could kill someone and they'd reappear, but a little weaker, in some location somewhere on the Planet with an aura preventing actual damage to them for a while: would things suddenly be different? What would that do to conflict?

This is what makes me think Lusternia /is/ doomed to fail: not enough people will dis-associate themselves from RL whilst they play.

There's a difference between disassociating and completely ignoring logic.

Saying "THIS IS RP! I DON'T HAVE TO BE HAVE ANY MORALS BECAUSE MORALS ARE OOC!!!" is just stupid. Any world is going to have some semblence of morality, I don't think it should be identical - look at the New Celestine thread where i'm saying Compassion isn't IRL compassion. But in this case, killing people who were part of the Old Celestine Empire (and have basically been forgotten until the Gorgog's escaped) is a bit off when you're a member of New Celest. You're both from the same lineage, except where you are fighting the Taint that Old Celest released, they are fighting the Gorgog's that Old Celest released. They don't have a Pool of Stars, they don't have a link to Celestia - that doesn't mean they don't follow the teachings of Celest which they would HAVE to, given that they were part of Old Celest.

You can't say "Hey, these Merians are the same Merians who were part of Old Celest and created the Gorgogs!"

and then say "Hey, these Merians don't follow the Light!"

Because, by logic, if they were the same Merians who were part of Old Celest, they would have to follow the Light, at least in spirit, if not through an actual link to the Pool of Stars.

By that line of reasoning Magnagora was part of the Old Celestian Empire and the descendants of them as well. I guess that means Celest should make love not war with them too! Afterall they can't be faulted for what their ancestors did!

ya.... morals are very subjective here. Applying may ooc standards to this game is a bad way to go. I.e, yes, while it may be wrong in the real world, sometimes you just have to let it go. Vice versa, some things that would go just fine in the real world, just dont fly here. we cant really just say, OMFG you cant do that unless your RPing a psychotic. After all, some of us kill 4-5 players a day, even some from friendly organizations to our nation as a whole, and few people blink an eye. In rl, i dont care which nation your from, but if you killed 5+ people a day, there would be a serious response, but here...mass unemotional murder is alright, but goddamn it you better not kill someone of your own race!

Has any proof been found that this was an empire sanctioned project? I don't think so. How do you know this project wasn't the work of some secret group of scientists? Not like that hasn't ever happened in RL...

Kaileigh is rock and roll




and that's all that really needs to be said.

I think the events post about it sums it up well enough:

OOCly I can understand the point of not wanting to limit what players can bash. ICly...it's bleh. Lusternia is a roleplaying game. Most of the fun of it is playing a role. I can go bash whatever I want for no reason over in WoW and get pretty pictures while doing it.

So what role exactly is Celest playing that says that anything not in the Light, such being based on arbitrary standards of determination, is free to be killed? Saying they're not under Celest's protection is something far different than saying people who claim to be following the teachings of the supernals can go on out there and have at it. And if the Merians aren't prime candidates to be brought back into the Light (assuming they're not actually of it..how does one determine that anyway? Is the Light synonymous with Celest? If they're not loyal to Celest they can't possibly be of the Light?) I don't know what NPCs are. But what Celest is doing at any given time isn't really the point. It's all RP even if it's contradictory to what the character professes to believe in.

I'm all for the crazed zealots that think they're walking in the Light but are really no different than their enemy role. It's fun, lots of opportunities for debate and meaningful conflict within and without an organization. What I dislike about this situation are a couple of things 1) It's a role enforced by a divinity. 2) Thus it's quickly becoming the dominant role in Celest without a lot of recourse for those who just don't want to play that role.

OOCly it's easy for people to not care if someone is a god or not. They'll argue with them. ICly it's a lot trickier. If you're trying to establish a good argument and convince people that X is really better than Y all of that effort can be destroyed just because a god comes along and says "No, X isn't better than Y. In fact, X is the path to certain destruction while Y is everything you could ever hope for. " They don't have to defend it. They just say it and that's that. OOCly you can know they're wrong since they're not truly a god but ICly what are you going to say? I'm getting to the point where I assume it's fine to treat a divnity the same as any other player if they're going to involve themselves the same as any other player but I think my character is going to not enjoy the consequences heh.

It's a very stifling environment. This post has already gone on waaaay longer than I intended though so I'll just shut up.

How can you even claim it's bad RP, I mean what right do you have to say that because you have some ethical sense ooc someone has bad RP cause they are killing merians.

So if Celest where to defend the merians, whats next, Celest defending Aslaran cause they are all fussy like, Celest defending Krokani because they where once allies with Old Celest.

Here is some news, Celest make's it's own RP. If they find that the merians on the isles are not following the light or even that they insult the light, it's their RP and they can kill him. Maybe some of Celest's merians think that the Merian's inability to close the rift forever shames New Celest, and portreys the light as weak, so they kill them.

Celest is not a 'good' organisation like the light in starwars is good. Celest if anything is an evil inquisition style goverment. They do not have to do what you perceive OOCly as good.