I actually disagree with a lot of what Verithrax said.



They could be transparent, and they could also have crystal variations that appeared as bone structure. Staying that they don't is just silly, since you certainly don't know it for a fact.



Again, I disagree. They might be naturally shaped in a random fashion, however, just like humans alter their appearance, there is no reason why a Lucidian couldn't shape theirs.



Who says they have to have humanoid-like feet? You just said they were random. Stop trying to place limitations because of a single picture you've seen.

Edited Version: removed the functions and internal action

a crystalline lucidian and is shorter than the average female. Constructed from a multitude of elongated, flat planes, the outermost layer of her lanky body is translucent, fading to an opaque core of jadeite. The same pale green jadeite also makes up her cranium. Crystal prisms grow from her head, the most prominent growing in three pyramidesque formations. In addition to those at her elbows and knees, small knobs of crystal protrude from her hips, wrists, and ankles. Her feet resemble hooves more than anything else.

I'm using cranium here to be synonymous with head. Is the word cranium more closely associated with skull?
The left and right sides of her body are not mirror images; the planes are cut differently and such. The pyramidesque formations are pointing in different directions. She is not regular or perfect, but I didn't know if it was something to emphasize.
In the image of the female lucidian on the website, her feet look like stilettos. I didn't think they were humanoid since they lack toes. I thought hooves would be an acceptable medium between the given image and a real human because the toes on an ungulate's feet are 'merged' together.
If any of my reasoning's off, please point out why.

Cranium is the scientific word for skull, so ya. Unless I've forgotten all that was taught to me in Biology...meh. That's what summer does to ya.

I think your description is nice, if a bit short...not that long is good but detail is nice. And..try to remember what kind of people will be looking at your description. Not everyone will know the word pyramidesque means, but then again that could just be me.

Lucidians are made of rigid crystal. The reason vertebrates have bones it to give support to the soft, mushy structure of an animal. Lucidians are not soft nor mushy; therefore they have no strict need for a bone structure. And if they have one, it's nothing like a human one. And transparency brings another set of problems; are we even sure Lucidians have internal organs? Are we sure they'd be visible? Lucidians have been described as translucent in the past, without hinting of internal organs. It's possible they don't need any.

By carving one's own crystal? Even assuming that wouldn't be extraordinarily painful, there's no precedent for it. Are Lucidians immune to you bashing their skulls in (So to speak)? It's safe to assume that doing that to one's own crest would hurt. A lot. And thus put people with carefully made carvings in the same category as humans with carefully made scars - Emo idiots.

Er, I said they were more random, not that they were randomly generated chimerae. Humans are random; besides the lateral symmetry, there are large margins of variation for the placement of features. But we don't see children randomly born with hooves often. Random means there'll be natural variation in their crest, crystal spikes, colouring, and so on. It doesn't mean they can be born with any custom set of limbs they want. Do you mean I can create a Krokani with hooves? What about mugwump? Maybe you'd like a hooved merian? When creating a description, we have to observe two things. First is the rule of least surprise; when in doubt, assume humanoid-like appearance. The second is that the pictures are the canon appearance of a member of those races, and thus should be taken as the standard. You can variate a lot from them, but you can't add completely new sets of limbs.

i need help with my nihilist description

He is an ordinary human and he is short for his race. He stands at five feet
and one inch tall. He is gaunt and his clothes look ill fitted to him. He has
lazy eye. His eyes are brown. HIs hair is black and messy. He has a neatly
trimmed goatee. His hands are the hands of a scholar. His fingers are thin and
long. He is wearing loose trousers of faded brown leather, a friendship ring of
pure jade, a sleeveless light-blue gem embroidered shirt, and a pair of black
shoes.

I don't like telling people what should change in a description. I don't think that anyone who has had a class or two in english and self-proclaims to be a 'gifted' writer really has any better of an opinion than anyone else.

Anyway, that said, I'll just go ahead and critique for you ninjasir.
I'd re-write it like this, mainly because the sentences are quite short.

He is an ordinary human and is short for his race, standing at just over five feet tall. His frame is gaunt, with baggy, ill-fitted clothing which hangs loosely on his body. His eyes are brown, below a nest of messy, coal-black hair which is complimented by his neatly trimmed goatee. Both hands are lithe, with long well-formed fingers that end in clean, manicured nails.


Oh and this is myself:

He is a noble imperial merian and looks to be on the disreputable side of his race. With a vestigial dorsal-fin on the crown of his head, colored a vivid red,and bone-studded piercings through both ears, he is quite the punk. These traits are complimented by stainless-steel studs through both eyebrows, above ink-black eyes, a small, seashell-pierced nose, and blue-tinged lips. His hands and feet still carry the rementants of webbing that is trademark for his race.

<(''<) (>'')> <(''<) .......( Punk Merian unite! )

Hmm...here's my version:(ninja's)

He is an ordinary human and is short for his race, standing at a mere five feet and an inch. He looks rather skeletal, his clothes hanging loosely on his body and thin but long scholarly hands protrued from the shirt sleeves. A disheveled mop of black hair sits on his head. Normal muddy brown eyes peer out through the strands that hang across his face. It is obivous to see that one of his eyes is lazy. A neatly trimmed goatee stands out amiss the grubby appearance of this fellow.

(nurgolkh's)
He is a noble imperial merian and looks to be rather disreputable. A vestigial dorsal-fin rests on the crown of his head, the hue of it a vivid red. Several bone-studded piercings are set into both ears, giving him a "rebel" appearance. Adding more so to this appearance of a rebel are stainless-steel studs that are pierced through his eyebrows. Sitting beneth his studded eyebrows are ink-black eyes that run down into a small, seashell-pierced nose and blue-tinged lips. Both his hands and feet have the rementants of webbing, associated to his race, the Merian.

Found this one today. Christ, someone is trying way too hard. The first sentence in particular had me laughing.

She is a noble merian lady and has a well-made form instantly bringing to mind
images of a high, rushing waterfall pouring down the mountainside in a
thundering roar amidst, the secret depths of a hidden forest glen. Only within
the grace of nature could an appropriate metaphor be found, for she epitomises
the essential delicate yet deadly balance found therein. Her belly is covered in
silken white fur, while golden-brown fur adorns the rest of her perfect form,
seeming smooth and soft to the touch. Her tail wags lightly about in the air,
clearly showing her happiness about something you cannot understand. Her paws
are small and well fitting for her petite form. Her head tilts to the side,
questioning your continued stare and a tiny hint of what might be a smile dances
at the very edges of her mouth; whether it is in kind humour or cruel mockery,
you cannot discern. She displays both grace and strength with her every stride,
her head always held high, her confidence giving a dignified impression. Her
voice is usually playful in one manner or another, soft and most pleasant to the
ear. Her eyes flicker to the sides, as if searching the shadows for someone she
both expects, and knows may never be seen again.

First, having something that resembles bones in appearance doesn't mean they serve any actual purpose. Have you ever seen raw crystal? There are often veins of other substances running through it. A Lucidian could easily be similar in appearance. Also, Lucidians do have to eat, and thus must have something to process the food for the raw energy they need to regenerate their crystal bodies.



Again, you're incredibly uneducated about the real world. In Eastern Cultures you have tribes who increase the length of their necks to insane proportions by wearing rings around their necks, and as they group older, they continually add more, which stretches the neck (and we aren't talking just like an inch or something either), also, there are, of course, tribes which stretch their earlobes. And in China they used to bind the feet of young girls so that they would stay small and petite, because that was "attractive" (even if, in some cases, the woman lost the ability to walk without shoes). And in South America the Indians would stretch the skulls of their children to imitate the appearance of one of their gods, because the skull doesn't fully fuse for a very long time, they'd essentially just slowly meld it into an oblong shape. None of this involves "cutting", though i'm betting a lot of it is painful, however, women who starve themselves in our modern culture just to look like supermodels is no less damage. So please, pull your head out of your ass and stop trying to be witty. You don't have the knowledge to win here.



Again, you're just flat mistaken here. And i'll explain it for you, again.

First off, when he says hooves, he means shaped like hooves. Not actual hooves like we'd find on a cow. Now, if we're going with that truth, your argument completely falls apart. How often are people born with mishapen limbs? Quite often. Ever heard of having a club foot? There are tons of genetic deformeties that appear across the span of human existance, as our bodies slowly attempt to evolve. It is not out of the question that a Lucidian could have short, rounded on top and flat on the bottom feet that could best be described as hooves. To say otherwise is to be purposefully ignorant.

Now, as for you ever-so-witty quips about the other races, if we're still working with the idea that its a limb that simply appears like a hoof, for any other race it would be a club foot, or something similar. You're just trying to make yourself seem special by taking a descriptive word literally.

Not only that, but due to how humans work in this world, another race could actually have actual hooves. They are able to interbreed AND create halfbreeds (which is denoted by the fact that Dracnari and Merian do not accept halfbreeds, meaning, there could be a human with scales and a tail, but with the inability to breathe fire, and thus it would be a human with scales and claws. If humans can produce such creatures, it is equally likely that they could retain the hooves of another race, AND via interbreeding with other races, you could justify a mugwump with hooves, as having a mugwump father and a human mother with very very very strong taurian heritage.

So, thank you, dear Verithrax.

You lose.

You don't need defined internal organs to eat; I'm not going to assume you're ignorant enough not to be able to think of several examples in biology and science fiction. And again, let me repeat; there is no precedent for it; you can't just go ahead and say 'Oh but my character is different' when the entire playerbase has defined what a race looks like. Unlike other races, Lucidians are made of freaking crystal. Their internal phisiology has to be different.

Two things. First, a character with an exceptionally long neck, small feet, or long earlobes is acceptable. One that has cleaved open his head to make three regular pyramidal shapes is not. None of the examples you've provided involve cutting through vital tissue; changing your body to be regularly shaped would be exceptionally painful.If you disagree, please carve your skull into the shape of a cheese grater. Thank you. Second, those are all cultural practices; if Lucidians did this kind of thing to their bodies, we would know. I was also assuming that she was describing a natural feature, as she hadn't provided an explanation; even so, the notion of someone slicing through his own head to carve it out is preposterous and doesn't compare to the process of gradually stretching a body part. Oh, and feet binding isn't to make them small; it's done during childhood to prevent growth, so it's not modification at all.

A hoof is a foot in which the middle finger fingernail has overdeveloped, replacing the foot surface. This cannot occur naturally in humans, nor in any species that is plantigrade (Like us and all other races in Lusternia.) 'Like a hoof' has no descriptive value as it's unimaginable for anyone who has actually seen a hoof. It would involve a cup-shaped foot (Impossbile) or a digitigrade, semicircular structure (impossible) or something equally unlikely. I've never heard of club foot being described as hoof-like, and it isn't.

Right. Then why doesn't she display any other characteristics of other races (Body or head hair, a Taurian leg structure, horns, being larger/more muscular, wide/muzzle-like nose) like would be expected? And half-breeds in general are fishy. Humans can have superficial characteristics (Colour, for example) of races. A member of a race that has more than a superficial characteristic is not a human but a member of that race; a human with hooves is no human, but rather a taurian. A human made of crystal is a lucidian. Humans can't carry major things like that over a generation.

Finishing posts with that kind of remark is the mark of losing an argument, kthxbai

Why do you always try to place everything in terms of humans? When you say internal organ, you're assume lungs, kidneys, and all of that. When I'm saying Internal organ, I mean an internal space dedicated to a process. So, if its a chamber where food is swallowed into (as they do indeed swallow huge chunks of food), that would be an internal organ, and where there would be food inside of it, it would most definitely be visible when if said Lucidian was transluscent. If not.. where does the food go?

And yes, that's the thing, you can go ahead and say "Oh, but my character is different!" because guess what, they can be. Its kind of sad how much you limit yourself to thinking in terms of everything as humans. It has been stated by the adminstration that they want us to have freedom in our decisions of how we create our character. You do not equal the playerbase. So keep your narrow-minded imagination to yourself.



First, you do realize we have magic in this world, correct? There is a ritual that literally describes your body as fading out of existance and then rebuilding itself. Don't you think there'd be some level of control over that? Not only that, but Lucidians' crystal bodies grow in sunlight, and there's no reason that growth couldn't be guided (and, you're the one who made the point about it not being a modification to prevent growth in some places while allowing it in others)

And yes, they are cultural, but you need to realize that Lucidians are a race. Saying because Hallifaxians didn't do it that Lucidians don't do it is stupid. Canadians, for instance, pour gravy on fries. Does that mean Americans do it? No. But we're both human. You can have different cultures within a single race. Plus, we now that the races exist outside of the Basin. Could his family have originated outside the Basin and retained certain rituals? Yes.

Also, in our modern cultures we have people who pierce their genetalia and anuses. I'd call that vital tissue. There are people who cover their skin in tattoos, and people who get their teeth sharpened or replaced with hunks of metal. There are people who get whiskers surgically implanted into their faces, and people who replace mammary tissue with little bags of silicon. Don't give me the bullshit about pain being a deterrent to anything.

You said it yourself, Lucidian physiology is different. AND we are in a world full of potions that make you all better in a snap. You don't know how Lucidians process pain, and given that any damage done could be easily healed (especially for a Lucidian), a masochistic one could very likely carve their head into the shape of a butterfly.

Your problem is that you are trying to make everything "real", but guess what, potions that magically restore a magical number known as "health" are not real. Lusternia is a world where you always come back to life, and limb that is severed can be restored with a couple applications of various ointments.

Tell me that with those sort off surroundings, that someone who felt really strongly about looking a certain way couldn't put in the effort to make it happen?



Bolded, because you're blatently wrong. Taurian, Viscanti, and furrikin can have hooves. Try again? And what's this "like a hoof' has no descriptive value? Are you saying that a crystal foot is bound by the rules of how a human foot grows? There plenty of carved crystal sculptures of horses. Those sculptures have feet that are carved to look like a hoof. Are they actually hooves? No. Do they look like hooves? Yes.



I didn't say this character was a halfbreed. But there is no reason at all why a Lucidian's crystal body couldn't have a shape that resembles a hoof. Look at the picture of the Lucidian on the website, her feet are stilleto heels. Those aren't boots, those are her feet. How in the Nil is that plausible, but a damn hoof isn't?

A member of a race that has more than superficial characteristics is a human. Dracnari don't accept halfbreeds. If you breathe fire, you're Dracnari, if you don't, you aren't. So, you have a human who greatly resembles a dracnari, but he can't breathe fire. He's still a human.

Your argument is even more bogus based on the fact that Humans in Lusternia are gifted with insanely rapid evolution. A race that is capable of evolving over a matter of 'days' rather than millions of years is not going to abide by any of your "impossibilities" considering that scientists currently believe the closest relative of the T-rex is the chicken. Cause, of course, its impossible for a lizard to grow feathers...but guess what happens when you give it a few million years? Poof.



Maybe for you, in which case, i'll take the kthxbai as your resignation. For me, its a show that I have no respect for you in this argument because you're the worst kind of RP-nazi: one that doesn't even have the ability to imagine the fantastic.

Erm. I did not mean to spawn such an argument, but Xikue's supposed to look like this. (Her feet are not visible due to them being coverned by her pants in foreshortening. I'll scan an image of them in and edit this post as soon as possible.)
If there's some way to describe her clearly, I'd be glad to learn how. Literal descriptions are not my forte.

That's quite an impressive drawing, Xikue. Aaand



I would say this description is perfect. I actually like it quite a bit.

and if you don't like your description, you could always request one of Viravain and see if She'll redo yours so it's more acceptable. if you would like an example, my old and new descriptions are earlier in this thread

Okay. Thanks for the advice, everyone.

Edit: Using edited version as base and advice to correct descriptions of head and feet.

Re-reading those two, it seems clear that:
1) Her organs and cranium aren't visible;
2) Instead of pointing that out, Fallen argued pointlessly. The issue here is that the description isn't clear and makes it seem like it's a single structure. I propose 'Three vaguely pyramidesque crystal formations grow from the sides and top of her head'. The equidistant part isn't consistent with the drawing and its the bit that makes it seem excessively regular, so I'm leaving it out.
The first sentence is a bit bad since there isn't a 'normal humanoid'; her hands could be larger than a faeling's (And thus quite small) or larger than a taurian's (and thus pretty large). Better to compare them to her own race. The lack of ankles and hooves are still fishy, as they go against the canon and make wearing shoes impossible (In theory; I think codewise taurian players can wear shoes, but they shouldn't since it's preposterous as taurians clerly have hooves.)

oh give it a rest Verithrax.

I was correcting my initial assessment to be consistent with the insights of 1) seeing the picture 2) being closer to full wakefullness.

if you don't want to have problems describing a Lucidian, I have but one word for you all. Obsidian

ooh.. and Trills living in Gaudiguch could be Obsidian too.

How can a trill be obsidian? I hope you mean the colour of the feathers. But then again, any trill can have black wings, except for the ones who don't want to look like whiny emo kids ripping off The Crow.