My only concern is that each VA doesn't have thier own personal shrine, but rather it is collective amongst all of them.

You are giving your offerings to the org, not to the Vernal.

edit: Another possible idea is that members of an org can dedice to either give essence to the nexus and create power, or they can give essence to a Vernal who can absorb it. But I like my first idea better.

There is already a way to donate essence towards an Ascendant, though not his/her personal reserves.

If that way is the way I'm thinking of it's not really that practical because of the transient nature of the mechanic to which it is tied, though.

BTW, if you're talking about offering it would have to be a pretty small fraction of what was offered. And I think this was brought up before and the Divine didn't like the idea (though I may be misremembering, and I don't have anything against the idea myself.)

Anything to make it less PK-orientated is fine by me!

I was talking about via cults, which are formed in elder god orders, and which tithe a fraction of essence offered to said elder into a cult essence pool.

I spoke to someone who was a demi and felt this system was making demigods even worse by comparison. I agree with that view, you don't need to buff up vernals that much and usurp other roles. GMs can do rites, there are plenty of avatars and that's also counting the fact that Glomdoring and Magnagora have fewest avatars to start with.

There is also the fact that doing all of these will imbalance the game even further, considering Celest and Serenwilde are the only ones with True Ascendents, and every city/commune but Magnagora is able to raise two safely (Mag can only raise one with their power levels). If you add this to the fact that Magnagora and Glomdoring chronically have fewer villages, due to lower numbers and fewer demigods, let alone ascendents it isn't going to change the situation, but make it even easier for Celenwilde to maintain their stranglehold.

Similarly Glomdoring has lowest activity levels and something such as this isn't exactly making it desirable to be part of an organisation that has fewer ascendents and with ascendents that will not even use their rite ability (if I can accurately judge all the candidates, which I think will be the case for any but xenthos). I think ascendents should remain out of reach for many and not made into a priviledge for the strongest organisations to abuse to maintain their dominance.

Do you have some constructive ideas for how to make it so not only the bashing/pk people will ever be considered for Ascendant? Or is your primary concern that the orgs that are active and industrious will be rewarded for that?

I actually did read through the entire proposal when it was actually in the proposal state, something that I'm not sure can be said of everybody who could see it at the time. It was a very long post after all, and that, I feel, makes the entire process seem that much more intimidating, bureaucratic, subject to bias, and difficult to pull off. But perhaps that was what you were intending.

First, I understand that the level 92 is not an absolute requirement. But, the current does say basically that if you aren't 92, you better have done a whole heck of a lot, and even if you have and aren't 92 (but are still at least 80), all your other "bonus service considerations" are waived. That may, to you, seem like a generous way to get out of the 92 requirement, but to me, it sounds more like a "we'll extend the chance to you, but we'll make it much harder for you, to the point that anybody in the dawn brigade over 92 who has done just a bit for celest will beat you"

Second, I retract my earlier apology for "jumping to a conclusion" about the candidate's philosophy; after re-reading the city scroll (which I assume now to be final and official for the time being), there is still nothing to the effect of what I was proposing. Let me cite the written items a candidate must submit:

-"portfolio of candidate requirements"
-"their meeting of requirements"
-"any bonus considerations"
-"personal written affidavits concerning the candidates (missing an apostrophe, nonetheless) character and less quantifiable qualities"*
-"explanation as to why they wish to become Ascendant"
-"what they would do with that position"
-"why they feel they have the qualities and drive necessary to be worth so much of Celest's efforts"*

Most of these boil down to "I'm level 92+, bash a lot, have been with celest for all my life, help out in raids, defend, and help out with village influencing. The only two points which come even close to my idea of a "philosophy" entry are the starred ones, but even these are weak. My original proposal, and I tried to make this as clear as possible in my post, was essentially what the candidate's philosophy -on life- were, something meant to be similar to what you read when you do HELP TERENTIA or HELP LYRETH. It's not just how they're a good person or what good qualities they have, because I'm sure those that don't fulfill these two basic requirements won't make it far. It's about what ideology they'll follow, because again, being an Ascendant has such big RP potential.

It is still far too easy with celest's system to raise somebody who does nothing but bash, defend, and raid. I will be blunt now, since apparently being verbose isn't as effective: I want somebody who my character can follow as a semi-divine being. I want a philosophy to follow. An ideology to learn about.

I know it's a new system (in reference to both ascendants and celest's nomination system). I am fully content to see how the first round goes. But, my entire point is that the system Celest has in place is not as conducive to raising somebody with a good RP (not incompatible with a good basher) as you may think, Catarin. And again, that is what I feel the thread was originally intended to say.

In other news, I really like Dag's idea of offering essence to an organization's ascendants, collectively. It involves more people.

Also, Ilyarin, I didn't know we could already do that in a way. Could you describe it? Also, what exactly is this "Ascendant" skill pool like? This isn't the first I've heard of it, but I don't know any details about it.

Slight edit: Ignore any parts of the end that I might've been ninjaed on.

If by industrious you mean bash excessively and have rp that is considered stable, then yes, that is my greatest concern. A concept such as this was not meant to have consequences outside the blessings and the domoths are fundamentally about bashing and finding the best candidate to fast-track to demigod or make a stronger demigod. No RP is worth 1million power.

I will offer though, if you do desire to make them somewhat useful outside that realm make it a related to actual organisation in benefitting it on some level, be it culture or power level, not merely bolstering their forces in existing conflicts or individuals.

Which part do you want me to describe?

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The Ascendance skill is essentially a way for ascendants to gain their powers over time at the cost of essence. It takes a massive amount of essence to make a small amount of progress, so there is no way for an ascendant to be created and instantly have the powers of an ascendant who has been around for centuries - which I think is a good thing (however demigods would have a headstart over anyone else). It basically contains the divine skills which differentiate an ascendant from a demigod.

This doesn't really count though, from what I've heard about it from Sojiro. First, it requires an active Divine (which was one of Daganev's prominent points), as well as actually being in their Order. Second, it goes to a cult pool which only allows for cult-related benefits, not for personal-use essence. As I understand it, the cult also drains personal essence every day for each member in the cult, as well as only giving you essence for offering when someone in your cult offers to that Divine. It seems pretty limited.

I think that being able to offer to a collective monument that is split up between all Vernals existing in that organization is a great idea. It's thus not tied to being in an Order, and it does actually give some reward for having fewer Vernals (at least in the short term).

There is no real precendent for claiming that it allows cult-related benefits only, since there is only one ritual of ascendance that has been learned so far (unless Shuyin has made a recent leap that I've not noticed).

I figured it stated that in the AB, as he spoke to us about that as fact. That said, it *is* pretty limiting in terms of draining personal essence every day, requiring being in an Order with an active Divine, and requiring that the people who offer also be in your cult.

Hmm, I suppose a lot of benefit was not seen in someone writing up a life philsophy. Honestly, if their philosophy and outlook is not pretty clearly known through their actions and work through the years, they shouldn't be a candidate. My personal feeling on the whole thing is that if people cannot bothered to read a couple of pages, it's quite possible they should not be trying to ascend heh.

There seems to be a supposition in your posts that someone being a basher and a fighter automatically makes them incapable of having a meaingful RP presence in their organization. Which is curious. The goal of any org is to find a well-rounded character for Ascension. Someone who does not have a solid grounding in bashing and fighting as well as RP and all the other intangible abilities is not well-rounded regardless of how good their RP may be. I doubt any org will raise people who are one-dimensional in their gameplay. You don't get into "mindless bashing" levels until you're past 92 anyway. It just takes a little more effort than your average level 60 player.

While I would very much like to see other ways VAs can contribute to their org besides Domoth Battles, I doubt I would ever support a candidate based on their RP alone. As I said at some point, I seriously doubt anyone can RP enough to be worth a million power heh.

Yeah, that's what I mean then. As an Isunite mine will be pretty horrible for that, and even if I jumped to Lisaera, when she goes inactive (as Charune has and I don't doubt she will someday simply because very few HAVEN'T at this point) I'd have to change orders again to get any use out of it. It's all a bit unstable.

As a matter of fact, the first ritual is of personal use only, and it does not benefit cult members. It also really depends how much essence is drained per RL day per person. It is possible it could easily be offset by holding a Crown (perhaps the reason why Estarra chose to give crowns a 25k essence generation).

I like the collective monument that is split better myself as well. The cults seem pretty limited and I dunno about anyone else, but I would hate for the elder god I followed to have some cult that worshipped someone else and everytime I wanted to offer to that elder I was helping that person. No thanks! It also seems inappropriate for a VA who is supposed to be a representative of an entire organization. Not just a subset in a particular god's order.

I thought the VA/TA cults were supposed to be seperate from Orders? Did I misread something somewhere? They're part of the Order?

Do you have to be a member of the Order that the VA/TA who's cult you want to be in is part of?

It got changed during dev apparently, so yes I think so to all questions.

Oh. Well, poo.

Another, frankly fundamental, issue is this: how do you measure good RP?

Granting a boon as incredibly expensive/powerful/prestigous as ascendancy would require a method of measuring relative RP worth as objectively as possible, something that I would see as being quite difficult to accomplish.