Well, I suppose I should put Felicia's new description up, for two reasons: 1.) It's often difficult to properly critique one's own work, and 2.) having boldly critiqued others' descriptions in great detail, it's time to put my money where my mouth is.

I've deliberately decided that Felicia's wings shall not and will never be touched by the vagaries of the shadowcaster transformation. They will always be immaculate and beautiful, none of that bat-winged nonsense. To compensate for this, I've used fewer "I'm shadowy and powerful, but still cute" traits in my description, and more "being touched by the Wyrd has made me noticeably uglier" traits.

Also, should I keep the olfactory description at the end, or toss it?

She is a nimble shadowsinger faeling and is wreathed in a faint aura of gloom. She is small of stature, perhaps six or seven handbreadths from head to toe. Her supple legs, narrow hips, and slight bosom cut a boyish figure. Her tawny skin is blemished by occasional smatterings of dark ochre veins. A wild mane of wavy, tousled auburn hair frames her features: round elfen face, pointed ears, pert nose, and narrow jawline. She has deep-set, olive-green eyes, with traces of bruising evident around the orbits. Her wings are expansive, immaculate and elegant, dappled with capricious whorls and striations of jet black, violet, and mauve. She smells faintly of dried leaves and cinnamon.

The only issue I noticed was trying to figure out if you meant six or seven of your own handbreaths, which makes you really oddly proportioned, or using it generically, in which case you face the problem of my furrikin paw being far smaller than an igasho's hand.

The proper term is "Cubit" anyway.

My beautiful baby boy who's ugly as sin.

So I've decided that I could use a little help with Xaak, as I feel his description is somewhat redundant. I also don't know how kosher it is to put vocal quality in the desc, but it's easier than typing out "say (his voice resonating and accompanied by the sound of tinkling crystals)" everytime I want him to talk. >.>

I also realize "opalescent" might not be a real word (though apparently Firefox has no problem with it, even though cMUD did), but it was the best way to describe his skin's appearance.

He is a crystalline lucidian and appears to be made of an opalescent, multi-colored crystal. He appears as though he would be muscular - were he made of flesh - his features sculpted to seem sinewy, yet not overly bulky, and stands at a fairly average six feet. Spiky crystals jutt from the top of his head, mimicking hair, and seem to be made of a tiger's eye crystal. Eyes made of purest emeralds gaze calculatingly at his surroundings; the only indication that they are looking at anyone or anything in particular is the slight glow that points towards wherever he is gazing. His voice is deep and pleasant to listen to, though it is practically monotone, and is accompanied by a cavernous resonation and the sound of tinkling crystals.

No it isn't. A cubit was traditionally based on forearm length. A handbreadth was based on the breadth of your hand, from the tip of the thumb to the edge of the pinkie finger. (The Imperial foot was traditionally based on the length of one's foot, and that's the only such bodily measurement still in use today, as far as I know.)

In any case, Sylphas makes a good point. I want to avoid using numeric measurements, but it's going to be difficult.

I personally don't consider it kosher, but my opinion certainly isn't law. I think you should find a way to reduce the verbosity of that modifier, and only use it occasionally. People will remember it, even if you don't use it constantly.



It is a real word, used to denote a vibrant mother-of-pearl sheen reminiscent of opals. If in doubt, you can always check an Internet dictionary source.

I'll critique your description in a while. It will take some time to do properly.

The thing though is that I don't really understand why vocal quality shouldn't be put in a description. It's part of who they are, right? Not to mention that that's always how Xaakin sounds, so technically, I should have to put it all the time when I'm speaking out loud. At least, that's how I feel about it. I understand that there are people who don't like it, I've just never really gotten why, considering it's not always easy to keep people remembering exactly how someone speaks.

Ah-h-h, you've defeated your own argument with this statement, I'm afraid! People won't read your description nearly as often as they'll hear your character speak. You're probably lucky to get just one LOOK per player, if any. By that logic, you're much better off placing the vocal description in your SAY occasionally.

As for why, well, think about the command: LOOK XAAKIN. In my opinion, this is a static visual review of the character. You won't hear a sword clanging on a shield just by looking at it, nor will you see what it looks like in action unless someone is actually swinging it. Since you can actually speak in Lusternia, it seems most appropriate to me to describe your voice while you're actually speaking, and to describe temporary postures (being permanently hunched over isn't temporary, though "moving gracefully" is) and actions through abilities and emotes.

(Scent is the only exception I allow myself. It's not visual, but it's fairly static, and it's reasonable to assume that anyone in the room who is scrutinizing you can probably smell it. Still, being skunked and such or wearing scents for influencing kind of ruins that, so even scent is on thin ice in my opinion.)

BUT! If you really think it's important, don't allow my opinion (no matter how persistent or well spoken) to sway you from doing what you think is best. I mean that sincerely.

Eh, I suppose that's true. I still just don't know how to incorporate it into SAY without it sounding... odd. :/

If perfume and skunking and such puts scent on thin ice, what about total darkness, blizzards, ectoplasm, being on fire, having the hood of your greatrobes up or down, or anything else that would change what you can see of someone? That's mostly why I allow some leeway, because if we get too picky it's just silly.

I made an alias so that whenever I SAY something it automatically puts in the (In a silken voice) part. I wish we had the same vocal system as Achaea, where you could set either an accent or a vocal quality. It really helped spice up the place, being able to imagine different people speaking in different tones and what not.

You said you use CMUD right? Me too, here's what I did: created an alias SAY with the value of: #if (%1 = to) {~say %params} {~' ~(In a silken voice~) %params}

You'll just have to be sure to remember that if you want to prepend your say with something else, put a space before you type out SAY, else it will try to do the alias.

Ooh, okay. Thank you!

Turnus does the same-- everytime he speaks he does so "In a low growl"

You could also design several such prependices and, through the miracle of scripting, arrange for them to appear in a random shuffle. (For variety's sake, natch.)

I don't have a damned clue how to do this, of course, but I know it can be done.

In a bright, ringing voice, you say, "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!"

With a giggle, you say "He's dead, Jim..."

Oh, the fun I could have with all of these .

That looks like Mushclient script. Can you do that in cMUD-ish terms?

Also, I love you, Ev. XD And yeah, I saw Turnus doing that the other day when Lucan encountered him. :3

In light of the post a few guys back, I've made a new set of descriptions for an alt of mine.





Any constructive criticism to be had? I had to make an adjustment to them after I was finished when I decided to switch the type of lobo he was, so there may be errors and oddities I didn't catch.

etc. All you have to do is create an extra variable (@voice) and in the part where it says %random(1,2) change the '2' to how ever many different voices you're going to have.

I'm sure there's a way in cMUD to get the length of a stringlist and use that instead of editing the code whenever you add a voice.