I think the Wyrd needs a redefinition or it needs to be pretty much declared in one fell swoop either Tainted, not Tainted, what it's supposed to be, how it works, who should be hating it, why, an where it comes from. Likely, this is all explained - but it needs to be set in stone and thrown across the world as one solid idea. That way things can be established and worked upon. While I hate to admit that interfering may be good sometimes.. if the Admin need to 'fix Glom up' they can start by making their RP as clear cut as the rest of the world. From what I see, Glom really just has no point in the world besides to hate on Serenwilde.

While I can see your point, I think it stands that Glomdoring was given something that no other organizations were given: The opportunity to choose for themselves. Why does Glomdoring have to be spoon fed on whether they're Tainted or not? Can't they worship the wyrd like Magnagora worships the Taint and Celest worships the Light? If anything, I think that Serenwilde should be the most confused on their stance. They don't even have a wyrd. They have forests.



Obviously it was intentional that they're not saying whether it's tainted or not, partially, I believe, because the reason that the wyrd was created was because members of Glomdoring were complaining that they were just a 'tainted forest', a colony of Magnagora.

As far as not having a point in the world, I believe they were given every opportunity, and every tool possible, to choose their own place in the world, which is much more than I can say about any other organization.

What's stopping people from expanding on and working on what's already there? Wyrd and hating Serenwilde. You could boil all the organizations down, Light and hating Magnagora, Taint and hating Celest, and... Well, as I said before I don't really think that Seren has any particular theme like everyone else, but I'm sure that someone will swoop in and correct me. (No, anti-city is not a theme. If you can't make it one word, and you can't capitalize that word, it doesn't count! )

I, for one, would rather not have Wyrd be 'defined'.

There should be a few central ideas, and everyone should be allowed whatever to have their own stance. Just makes it far more interesting than "Two tainted orgs, two non-tainted orgs."

It also muddys conflict a hell of a lot. It lets Glom be wishy-washy and gives room to people who will not take a stance on the Taint - which is, in my opinion, detrimental to the game.

It also creates the option for 3-1 situations where Magnagora is isolated and available for attack by every other organisation, which used to happen before treaty with Glom (if it still exists after event!).

The Wyrd to me (and, keep in mind this is an outsiders view, but my impression none-the-less) is sort of a combination of things.

Sometimes, it conjurs images of twisting vines and tree trunks, dead trees, that sort of surreal, imposing feeling you get when you stand next to a very large, but dead tree. I picture real forests, very dense and inhospitable. Cracked tree trunks teeming with insects, roots that grow haphazardly around obstacles and almost arbitarily seem to arch out of the ground. A feeling of timelessness, but not in a silent, regal way- in an almost primordial, hostile way- a feeling that the forest was there before you, will be there after you, and has overrun and devoured things greater than you.

Sometimes, it feels like a particularly dark Tim Burton scene. Familiar, but unfamiliar. Bent. Off. Things that should seem wrong don't. Things that should seem right...feel wrong. Things that would be ugly have a haunting beauty. In some ways, like the woods in The Brothers Grim.

Sometimes, it seems bleak and dead. Like a forgotten cemetary that the trees have reclaimed. Like weathered, leafless, plantlife focing itself through rocky, broken ground under a grey, somber sky.


The feeling I don't get that I think I should/could? A deep, cold wood, black as night and silent, but you can't help the feeling that there's something always in front of you, or behind you, lurking in the inky shadows.

Anyway, here's a few lines that I saved from a poem, well, in truth, a Lexus commercial based on a Shakespear line... but I always liked them, and they remind me of Glom, what it is, and what it could be, very much so.

Ill winds mark its fearsome flight,
and autumn branches creak with fright.
The landscape turns to ashen crumbs,
when something wicked this way comes.

Crystal water turns to dark,
where e'er its presence leaves its mark,
and boiling currents pound like drums,
when something wicked this way comes.

A presence dark invades the fair,
and gives the horses ample scare,
for chaos reigns and panic numbs,
when something wicked this way comes
---------------------------------------------------

Also, this poem, of debated authorship, though I think credit goes to Alice Day:

Flowers bloom as black as night
Removing color from your sight
Nightmarish vines block your way
Thorns reach out to catch their prey

And by the pricking of your thumbs
Realize that their poison numbs
From frightful blooms, rank odors seep
Bats & beasties fly & creep

'Cross this evil land, ill winds blow
Despite the darkness, mushrooms glow
All will rot & decompose
For something wicked this way grows...

Glomdoring isn't desolate. At all.

The wyrd, the physical, gaseous, mauve stuff, is fertilizer on crack. Stuff grows almost too well in it, and you see plants misshapen for it, but there's nothing desolate about Glomdoring, except for that wasteland in the east, but that's not even forest.

The wyrd=taint arguments are silly at best. Do IC arguments have to make sense? No. Point still stands that they have nothing in common that I can find.

Does that mean Glomdoring should be kosher for Serenwilde? Not unless they want it. You still have conflict over the fae, Hart wanting Crow dead, and arguments that the wyrd isn't natural.

When I first started playing (as a Shadowdancer no less) that was the coolest part of Glomdoring to me. It never seemed to reflect itself in the playerbase of Glomdoring, at least from whom I ran into, so I wasn't really interested in staying and being forest-goth.

i swear on my glomdoring alt i've never once actually gotten to speak to another glomdoring..

You can manage to be in the most populated org while still not talking to anyone, though.

Too much of Glomdoring's people side with the 'silent, dark and deadly' type. I have a faeling that is more on 'wild, crazed and dark'. I find myself talking to ... myself at times.

Give in to it! I do it all the time and I'm fine! Really! I'm absolutely super!

Anyway, in all seriousness I think they key to social interaction at least in Lusternia is to dive right in and chat to people. Most of the people I have met in game are willing to talk, so long as you don't do anything stupid, OOC etc.

If anyone's read the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series (very Tolkien-like in some respects, but has a dark introspective element), some of the forests make me think of Glomdoring, particularly the Lifeswallower Swamp.
Actually, come to think of it, a LOT of the aspects from those books remind me of Lusternia.
I suggest you all read them. Do eet.

I don't see the problem. Forest v. Wyrd v. Light v. Taint! Muddied conflict is more complicated and interesting.

Hear Hear. If you take all of the ambiguity out of the game, then you take much of the RP with it.

Until you muddy it to the point where it isn't conflict and it's loose justifications to try and be different. In the end, not giving any real definition runs the risk of making organizations all the same.

This is a very important piece of the puzzle. Serenwilde doesn't have any particular theme. They have their war mongers, their anti-city people, their city-ambivalent people, their celebrants, their pacifists, and more. The relative philosophies of Moon and Stag render it so that a member of the Serenwilde can hold pretty much any world view or virtue that they desire so long as it "doesn't harm nature", and since no one can agree on exactly what that constitutes, even statements like "we all hate cities!" can't necessarily be agreed upon.

Now, we have Glomdoring. We have something that started out as definitively being "tainted forest", and then that was changed to be "another forest, a different forest". Okay. Given this, I don't think it's possible to arrive at the same level of diametric tension that Magnagora and Celest share, though it will be expected for the sake of the game, for the sake of conflict, and for the sake of having reasons to fight. Now, what virtues, goals, and world views can be attributed to the Wyrd that can accomplish this without having some sect of the Serenwilde feeling like its being copied, since Serenwilde feels like it can be so quintessentially amorphous in the same regard, and not result in the feeling that whatever Glomdoring is doing is making it a subcategorized version of Serenwilde?

The problem is that the premise "if you can't define it in one word it's not a theme" is completely nonsensical. For there to be a variety of interpretations of Seren's various indicators on flavour - the Demon Lord's various teachings, for example, are easily as flexible as Brother Hart's - there doesn't have to be a lack of properly-defined identity. There are pacifists in every org. There are ambivalent-X and anti-X people in every org. I don't even know what you mean by celebrants, so trying to pass them off as some kind of different demographic comes off as more than a little cheesy.

"We all hate cities" doesn't work because we can't afford to hate cities, just as either city can't afford to hate communes. Taint and the Light don't get on particularly well with Nature as concepts and vice-versa but you don't have to make your theme diametrically opposed to something and in fact focusing too much on that side of things has caused identity issues in the past when those things get metaphorically yanked away (of course, focusing on the identity you do have can get yanked away in the same way, Maeve).
But in any case, you can define "Nature" as a theme in one capitalised word. It's not fully defined, but neither is "Taint" and "Light" sure as hell isn't and they get along on their own - distinctly - just fine. The fact that "Wyrd" thinks it crosses over with Nature in all the wrong places is not somehow Serenwilde's fault, and trying to avoid the problem by shifting over the responsibility is not going to improve matters.

EDIT: And nor is copying Serenwilde, just so that's clear!

But the Wyrd IS nature, my friend.

Nature in all its perfect glory!

Many Serens disagree. Actually, I would like to hear both sides of the story. Why is/is not the Wyrd natural?