You should bold the last line of the post as well!

"That which was once the taint"

done!

Plants still grew in Glomdoring when it was clearly tainted. The taint in Glomdoring was definitely changed, but that doesn't make it not tainted. If there were no abiguity, it would be less interesting.

Edit- about the snip, one can merely argue that taint in the context of the events post refers merely to taint as Magnagora knows it, not taint in the broader sense of being "bad thing that has it's orgins in the soulless/kethuru". The definitional turning creates the ambiguity, but it doesn't make the Wyrd untainted, it just makes it not The Taint in the magnagoran sense.

Ahh, ok! sorry about that. I thought people were missing my point again. No worries.

edit: Unless people change the definition of taint, (which happens all the time) after re-reading that event post that Hyrtakos posted, I have a hard time saying that Wyrd is still tainted OOCly.

As far as I understand, Taint is specifically the "byproduct"/"feces" of Kethuru. (not sure if its been expanded to all soulless or not, was abit confused on that issue)

The Wyrd contains or was partially created by Excoroperditio as it is nothing more than the Taint transformed. At best you could claim that it is some combination of Excoroperditio and Immanidivinus. Being able to detect the Excoroperditio that has been left behind is perfectly reasonable. It is up to the players to explain why exactly the failed removal of the Taint which resulted in the Wyrd makes the Wyrd safe.

As I started before, not being able to sense the Soulless origins of the Wyrd would force RP, sensing the Soulless origins does not. I suppose at this point if you do not find that reasonable then we will just have to agree to disagree.

Something I never quite understood:

Soulless = bad, unconditionally
Taint = bad to Celest, not-so-bad to Magnagora.

But, if the Taint comes from the touch of Kethuru (a soulless), does that mean Magnagora supports soulless gods? (Which evidence doesn't seem to support). If Kethuru were to break loose a bit more and touch the world some more, that would help spread taint, which is what Magnagora should want, shouldn't it?

Also, would the "touch" of other soulless gods also be considered the same "Taint", or would each have his own effect?

Of course the wyrd is taint transformed. I don't think anyone has denied that. Glomdoring and the wyrd is both deeply rooted in tainted origin, but transformation means turning into something else than what it was. As it was transformed, it was not a failed attempt to remove it, otherwise it would not have become the wyrd and remained taint.

Read the paragraph again. There was no failed removal of the Taint. Infact, what happened was they tried to RECREATE the FOREST, but instead RECREATED the Taint.

I.e. They aimed for the mothership, but only hit the invisible forcefield instead.

I think Magnagora embraced the Taint (not Kethuru) because the Taint apparently 'changed', 'transformed' them to make them stronger. Now they accept that Soulless = bad, because the Soulless want to destroy and devour Lusternia, but they use byproducts of the Soulless for their own uses. Much like Fain and his Traitors (using Soulless essence to make the Elders stronger).

EDIT: Ninja'd, so I quoted the post I was replying to.

EDIT 2: How on earth did Welcome Eventru become a debate on Wyrd-Taint??? Welcome, Eventru!

I guess I feel like, the way Magnagora sees it is, if they could harnass Kethuru and use him to taint the whole basin, and then either reseal or otherwise control him, they'd do it in a second. It's the same attitude of Fain's elixer- they don't see soulless corruption (I'm using the word again!) as a bad thing in and of itself, but rather just something to make themselves stronger with, and to defeat their enemies with. The ends justify the means. So long as they defeat their enemies, who cares about trivial things like "have you become what you fought?"

Regarding the Wyrd, the process transformed The Taint, but that doesn't inherently mean the Wyrd is not "tainted" (see next paragraph). Transformation does not inherently remove all underlying attributes of a thing, even if some attributes are changed. That's where the necessary ambiguity is. I've never been arguing out of character that the Wyrd is "definitely tainted" (except maybe as a counter example or something, I don't really remember now, but that wasn't my argument in any event), just that it is definitely not, not tainted in a definitive sense! (Go grammar! We you, even when we do bad things to you!)

Of course, this hinges on how you want to define tainted (as opposed to "The Taint"). I'm using it in the "thing that has its origins in the essence or whatever you want to call it of Kethuru/maybe other soulless warping the world, and can thus be considered "bad" ICly by some on these grounds" sense. Which is a broad definition. Others seem to take it much more narrowly as "Exactly and limited to that which flows throughout and is used by Magnagora, unchanged." My problem with the latter is that it takes a wrecking ball to the abiguity that allows the underlying factor of the commune conflict to make real sense, and allows for characters on both sides who aren't bigoted nincompoops if it isn't tainted (boadly) or delusional morons if it is tainted (broadly again).

What is indefinite about "wholly new" exactly?

Hart vs Crow isn't enough? McCoys vs Hatfields??

Also: I echo what Hyrtakos said.

Context and philosophy. Lets say I make a cake out of flour, eggs, sugar, and everything else. I bake the cake. It is now a "cake", something wholly new arguably. But by the same token it is still the product of it's components. So, in this case, if The Taint (narrow) is flour, it is still an ingredient in the cake of the Wyrd, so there still exists indefinite ambiguity as to whether the.. er... cake... is tainted (broad).


Now I want cake.

Jerk.

Wow, this analogy really hit home with Passover just a few days away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chametz

I no longer echo Hyrtakos's statement

Isn't this a commonly used analogy explaining the difference between physical and chemical changes in gradeschool?

The fact is, is that the flour is an ingredient as you say and -loses- all of its unique properties when baked into a cake... that is by definition a chemical change. You have just unknowningly proven yourself wrong.

Think of it like this... chlorine(taint for this example) is toxic in its pure form to humans, yet you consume plenty of it daily in the form of salt(wyrd tastes good!). Your logic couldn't be more faulty, and quite frankly I'm disappointed in Daganev.

It's an analogy Hyrtakos. It doesn't need to be perfect on a literal level to work, that's a strawman. The nature of physcial and chemical changes have nothing to do with the fictional concept of the wyrd beyond the value of their own analogies. I could use a different analogy to display the philisophical question of "if I combine X Y and Z to create A, and A is permanent, can it be argued that X Y and Z still exist?" That's the whole ambiguity of the thing. It's a philisophical question that doesn't have a broad answer.

The cake could be said to be tainted because it was made from The Taint. Or you can look at the cake and say "You're crazy! This is what it is, a cake-wyrd, and nothing else." And that's what makes it ambiguous, and the ambiguity is good.

Daganev brings up dietary habits- for religious, or other reasons, people may choose not to eat food that is made (chemical change or no) of or from certain things. To them, the original components are important, even if they have been radically altered by the process of making the food.

(And now I seriously do need to eat. Hopefully the taco bell down the road won't have "tainted" beef... you know what, I think I'm going with the chicken.)

A strawman? I wonder if you know the meaning of the term... you are the one making such analogies to argue the wording of the event post trying to open up loopholes. All I did was close said loopholes with scientific fact.

I have never once heard of someone not eating salt because of chlorine. For that matter... I'd like you to tell me something you eat that doesn't have carbon within it and let me know if you'd also eat a chunk of pure carbon.

I'm not debating that your character likely believes that bread is magical flour, but Elostian has made it clear elsewhere that there is no reason that scientific experiments would not be able to be carried out in Lusternia and that there is no need for intuition to be stunted. You can debate philosophy all you want, but when I place some flour in one hand of yours and a slice of bread in the other... I'd like to think you can piece together them not being the same thing, in Lusternia or out.

I've said it many times before that it could be a mini event for Glomdoring to invite some scientists from Serenwilde or Celest to stay in the forest for a while to conduct in depth experiments on the wyrd to determine its properties, but the fact is that people would still only believe what they want to believe.

I totally want a mashed potato sandwich now...

Meh, Machiavellian-ism. I sense a bit of the same in Eventru, even...I guess it makes for interesting RP!

And I agree, poor Eventru. Welcome again Eventru!