I wasn't around for that, but I sure as heck wish I was!

But yes, the previous Paladin guild used to be a really militant place that taught people how to do combat. You didn't get Knighted unless you passed combat courses. Then they promoted someone named Kellonius or someone to Knighthood and made an "alternate" route for people who "couldn't" fight. Even as a Java user in Achaea for somewhatever years I could fight in Achaea. After that the Church started rolling downhill. Then auto class and Houses came in and everything went into mass chaos -- the Paladin Guild became the Guardians and opened their doors to multiple classes (they should have stayed all Paladin or all Knight class. No need to let in Priests). Priests did the same and soon enough all the Houses in Shallam did that -- it was a total wreck.

A train wreck where an airplane appears out of nowhere and blows the rest of the train up, and then someone bombs the airplane, and while all that is happening, 5 o'clock traffic is hitting the mess.

I would also like to note that the Priest guild was also very good for teaching combat, and they still promote it. The Church doesn't have shrines (I don't really know anything about that, to be honest). The second Codex -- the Codex of Light -- was so blatantly written by Tarah (the Goddess of Love and Compassion. Not at -all- like Raziela. She didn't enemy people to her order or believe in compassion through death all that much. Flimsy order. Air-tight beliefs if done correctly, but half the people in the city and her order -- heck, 2/3 of Achaea, mistook/mistake compassion for pacifism). I doubt Lorielan or Pentharian had much to do with writing it, as far as that was concerned.

If I were to do a Codex it would be something like this:

Thou shalt destroy Evil.
Thou shalt destroy Chaos.
Thou shalt always promote the Light.
Thou shalt not falter in thy beliefs.

Not, "Well you can do bad to be Good but it really depends on the situation." The problem with 'good' is that there's so many different ways to define that that some people want to skirt it and others want to be zealots. All in all, someone ends up poking someone else's eye out and then everyone starts yelling, and then the bad guys get the upper hand. The new Codex tried to give a solid definition that everyone in the Good city could follow, but they missed the mark. All the old Codex needed was some updating and a little correcting here and there and it would have been golden.

... Sorry, still a bit bitter about it. It's difficult seeing all these people who have the ability to be great fighters just go down the drain because they aren't pushed in the right direction.

If Lusternia ever gets Houses or Autoclass, I will be very angry at IRE. Very, very angry. No autoclass! No Houses!

And that's why you're a member of New Celest and the Celestines, where we urge you to free the Tainted from their misery by killing them! Can't mistake compassion for pacifism here!

The only thing I regret is that Arilyon and I didn't bloodbond, because we both wanted to just were too scared to ask each other even though we were best friends .

I wish I'd had had developed public presence to counter Gwylifar's slanders as soon as he started spouting them, rather than endure these endless slams just because I sided with the people who didn't want to role-play bestial aslaran sex. (See Gwylifar's contributions to ths Scrying Pool on aslaran sexuality, which at the time he did not even offer any flexible interpretations for, nor offer most of the hedging he slipped into this version.)

It's darkly humorous the people who'll still attack me as supposedly indulging in the things he wanted and that I refused to support.

What about the incident with Stagar though? This sounds like revisionism...

Exarius, please try again. Your substitute response should have at least two of the following characteristics:

• It should not solely consist of lies that have already been long since repudiated a dozen times in your presence.
• At least part of it should be relevant.
• Some aspect of it should make sense in a universe where sometimes things people say aren't secretly about you.

Some people think I'm crazy for hoping you can ever even get one of the items on that list, but I think you can pull of two. I just can't figure out which two. But it must be noted, you scored yet another zero in that last post. I don't think there's a single thing in there that's even remotely factual, and it's frankly remarkable how good you are at that. You didn't even describe your own actions with any accuracy.

Incidentally, don't you wish I'd quietly quit at that point, too?

To those reading along at home, the only differences between the stuff posted on the wiki and the stuff posted in the clan way back when is the change from first to third person, as can be confirmed by anyone who can log into the Totem Tribe and check (unless someone altered it since... who even owns that clan now?). Exarius's level of accuracy in slinging pointless accusations is so low that he can't even be arsed to compare two text documents before accusing me of altering them. Consider that a bellwether of the accuracy of the rest of his post.

Rawr, catfight.

Or should I say, monkey poo-flinging?

ETA:
Things I regret:

Not killing nearly enough people, and trusting Sheia. (SHEIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! )

Ok, I know this is off topic, but here is a brief history of what shrines used to be like. Originally, Orders had no shrines, all they had was rooms that the God/ess would mark, and you could offer there to give them essence. That's it. No Order Powers or anything, it was just so the Gods could fling fire or whatever else they do.

Shrines, on the other hand, were used solely by Devotion users (aka Priests and Paladins, which in those days were the only ones who could be in the Church). Each Devotion user had a certain number of "devotion points", which would regenerate daily depending on how many shrines there were, and how powerful those shrines were. A high skill in Devo was required to erect a shrine. Another high skill would allow someone to force up to 3 animals to follow them, and then they could be sacrificed to sanctify the shrine. If you didn't have that skill, you could only sanctify by taking buckets and corpses to a butcher shop, you would butcher the corpse, which would fill your buckets with blood. Then, take the bucket to a shrine and POUR BUCKET ON SHRINE TO SANCTIFY (or defile, if you were anti-church). It was actually somewhat tedious, but on the other hand there was a real sense of community getting all of Shallam to run around ratting and killing things to sanctify shrines.

Now, shrines had several levels, I think maybe 6, ranging from wooden shrines, being just built, to golden shrines, being fully sanctified. Shrines were used for several skills. Priests could only summon their maces at shrines, which actually weakend them substantially, compared to other early skills. Actually, I think it was the only early skill that used shrines. The other skills were the rites in Devotion. Nowadays, rites only affect the room they are enacted in. Back then, you enacted the rite on the shrine itself, and each shrine had an area of influence depending on what level it was. 5 rooms in any direction for a golden shrine. Pilgrimage wasn't a rite back then, you could simply pilg to anyone in the area of influence for any shrine, which was pretty sweet.

Why... Why god, did I read that?... Damn my morbid curiosity. I regret reading that.

What happened, anyway?

She backstabbed me in the back from behind while I wasn't looking.

I don't get it. Its basically just a description of things you'd see on public television. I didn't think there was anything all that remarkable about it.

Oh! For Daruin, here's a bit of nostalgia for you.

No regrets....ever.

YEAH, OLD SCHOOL. Ahem, I'm done now.

Mm, I don't really regret anything done on Kharaen.

She's in a happy, if bored, place.

No, there's nothing remarkable about it. The very same thing was discussed, in that much detail, on the Discovery Channel. I was just trying to be funny, but apparently I failed. Or you just don't have a sense of humour, either or.

It's not really his (her?) fault. A lot of people are deadly serious about this. You're allowed to have sex and allowed to speculate on what it's like to be in a different world, just not at the same time, to them. It's inexplicable but widely prevalent; I assume it must be because in some other context something bad happened somewhere once.

Sometimes I wish I had stayed in the Glomdoring as a Shadowdancer. Shayle is ultimately the most awesome guild master I ever had, and made me feel loved...sometimes. If it weren't for finding friends in the Serenwilde, I would have tried to get back into the forest already. Sorry, Nejii.

Thank you for the compliment. It means a lot.