Hyrtakos, what rainydays made me realize, is that the Taint is very much like Chametz (the wiki article I pointed to). It not a question of what it is, but rather how it was made, or what it was made from. (However, one could still not smell the flour in the bread, just as one can not smell taint in the Wyrd!)

It wasn't exactly his analogy that I agreed with, but rather one that I derived from it.

A scientific fact that has no bearing on whether wyrd has taint in it.

And as daganev brought up (albiet somewhat indirectly), there are lots of people who will not eat certain foods because those foods were made with a particular ingredient in it. That's why there is ambiguity. Again, I'm not arguing that the Wyrd IS tainted, I'm arguing for the ambiguity of whether or not it is.



Lusternia is not science in the real world. There is science, but, there are also flying/collapsing broadcast centers that defy science as we know it. I can look at bread and say "this was made with flour." Now, personally, some of the nicest ingredients I've ever met have been flour, but now we're getting caught up in the analogy.



Well, that goes without saying, and cuts both ways.

It's like this. Lets say that I'm going to gsnick a food called a Flobaru (if this is a real food, pretend it's not. I'm assuming its a random word I just made up). I'm going to put two gloknafs of a substance called Akuomatine into the Flobaru. Akuomatine on it's own will make your skeleton climb out of your body, do a dance, then run off to join the circus. I gnick it into a Flobaru and say "Akuomatine is in this, but it's been gsnicked." Do we eat the Flobaru? Maybe the Akuomatine makes it taste like the best thing ever, or maybe now, when your skeleon leaves your body, he steals your stuff and takes it with him. We don't know, because Akuomatine isn't real. Same deal with the Wyrd. Without Estarra (who is the substitute for the laws that govern reality) concluding the issue, it is just going to come down to player IC opinion. But until that happens, there is OOC ambiguity (or even IC ambiguity if your character wants there to be.)

Since we've hit the "people are going to believe what they are going to believe" mark, I think that, barring something that isn't going to make me go in circles, I'm actually going to go play Lusternia now.

Oh, and Eventru... sorry about your thread.

Religious traditions could not have less of a bearing on the topic though... how are you arguing something going from toxic to heavily eaten with ritualistic fasting? Once again people are attempting to argue facts with beliefs. (The Jewish traditions are often amiss mind you. They outlaw the bread for fermenting with yeast, but wine fermented with yeast is perfectly fine... so how is yeast as an ingredient supporting you?)

Ambiguity seems to be the word of the day, so let's adress the fact of the way the event post was written. The event was simply not carried out in a manner to promote ambiguity and instead people are trying to interprete it in a way suited to them. This argument started with me showing you the events post and you trying to whittle away from what it said. I still do not understand how the difference between leavened and unleavened bread isn't something "wholly new" again... reaffirming my point. (I'm sure if they were the same thing, religions would not be so strict about it, eh?)

So now you are arguing the hesitation to eat something that could possibly do anything? I don't see what you're really arguing, but suffice to say... everything you eat nowadays just about somebody had to "test" first at one point or another. It might be true that they didn't comprehend the dangers associated with that, and I'm sure many ancient humans died due to poisoning, but new things were still given a chance. Something that can not be said in the IC parallel to this point.

There is no clear, definitive rationale or example that proves the Wyrd is not infected with Taint. I know this because the administration (specifically Lisaera) has posted this on forums before and stated that it is intentionally ambiguous. I’m not sure why certain people from Glomdoring think they know better (or flesh out botched analogies), but seriously, this tangent is lame and overdone.

@Urazial- There are tainted plants (in the room descriptions) on Nil. Earwort and Wormwood both grow exclusively in taint. Glomdoring likes to push the message that the Taint destroys life but cannot create it, which is clearly false.

EDIT: Fuel to the fire!

The Swamps of the Seeping Plagues. —> Nil
The swamp here is thin and stagnant, a murky brown soup topped with floating
scum. Mosquitoes skitter across the air, whilst other insects float and swim on
the surface. Broken sticks and rotting trees lie in the water, dark black scars
marring the wood. To the north and west the island drops away, only a rim of
rock preventing the swamp from spilling downwards. The red sky above continues
downwards, as far as the eye can see.
You see exits leading east, southeast, and south.

River through dead swamp. —> Glomdoring (Prime)
The bright sun shines down, blanketing you with its life-giving warmth. The
river continues through stands of dead trees, roots deep within the water at the
river's edge. There is no bank between river and swamp. The only way to tell the
two apart is the clearer colour of the river water and its swifter flow. The
sound of insects and toad-song is the only noise apart from the lapping of the
marsh water.

Notice a theme? I could post more if necessary. The physical descriptions of the Wyrd and the Taint upon the environment are almost identical. In both instances, there is physical decay and destruction. Delete Glomdoring! It's Tainted!

Just like you. You don't see ambiguity because you don't want to. It's plain as day to me, but that's how I want to see it. It doesn't make you any more right than me though, but now we really are going in circles.

No, and you know it.



What kind of knucklehead tests a Flobaru? Not me.

Silly Munmun. I never once said that the wyrd was completely taint free. I said it was rooted in it, but yep, it was transformed into its own beast. Might as well say nature is just pure Light because both of them. My arguement has largely been that it isn't really corrupted in a broad sense, but that was clarified by Rainydays. And yes there are herbs that grow in taint, but the vast majority react as they do in Aqua puddles- they die. Therefore, the elemental nature that is taint and puddles is clearly lacking in the wyrd. Wyrd's quite clearly unnatural, but it isn't taint. You can scroll up to see the transformation of the taint into the wyrd if you like, and I suppose you can draw whatever conclusion or previous posting by anyone, but it's awfully hard to dispute what the admins made perfectly clear with that little transformation.

"(The Jewish traditions are often amiss mind you. They outlaw the bread for fermenting with yeast, but wine fermented with yeast is perfectly fine... so how is yeast as an ingredient supporting you?)
"
Ahh, see this is a missunderstanding.

The issue is not fermenting. The issue is the mixture of the grain with the water resulting in a rising. (this just happens to be one form of fermenting)

And in this case the analogy is actually just backwards.
Grain X (soulless) + water (excretion)= taint. (matzah)
Grain X+ water + rising(transformation) = Wyrd. (chametz)
HOWEVER!!
Grain Y (Elder) + water (exretion) = ?? (flat bread)
Grain Y + water + rising (tranformation) = ??++ (bread)

Now imagine if in passover we were ONLY allowed to eat Chametz. (instead of not allowed)

What this mean is, is that even though Grain X is only a minor part of the overall product, it is also the most important part. Even though the actual outcome is completely unrelated and is a wholly new thing!

So its the same way with the followers of Eventru. Even though its a whole new thing, the very fact that "soulless" was once a part of it, makes it bad bad bad. Even though it is a whole new thing.

I look at it this way-- the Taint was/is to some people a very real, very powerful, and VERY dangerous. Whether or not a post says "wholly different", people are scared of anything that has had the touch of the Taint. So, though the Taint in Glomdoring was baked into the Wyrd, the fact that it started from the Taint will always make some people panic, ask "What if?". Salt is quite common for us, but an example could be drawn if salt was a new substance that we didn't know much about. What if the chlorine in salt became separated some how? Salt is completely different from chlorine in almost every way, but chlorine is still a vital part of NaCl-- salt would not be salt if the Cl was removed. You might say that one theory is that if Nature is Nt and Taint is Ta, then the Wyrd is NtTa, something wholly different, yet made up of the parts. People are worried about the parts, even if the parts are inert and do not (or, possibly, cannot) do any harm.

Of course, we have no way of knowing if this is the way the Wyrd works. That's why there is the ambiguity. When it comes to the Taint, people don't want to take any chances.

Taint = Twisted. Your soul will be corrupted, you will be changed and transformed.
Elements = Fundamental parts of the world. It's the raw form of everything.
Nature = Combination of the Elements, + Life. ( A tree: grows on earth, fed by water, warmed by fire, and breathes in air. It's alive.)
Wyrd = Taint, but Taint which was changed so that Nature can foster in it.


That's my summary.

EDIT: Your super-fast posting abilites overpower me. Ninja'd by two posts.

My understanding is that the Wyrd is not TaNt. Instead it is the following.

Nature = Nt = H
Taint = Ta = O
Wyrd = Wy = O + 1 = F

Now, Glomdoring pre Wyrd = O + H
Glomdoring post Wyrd = F + H

To use the chemistry analogy.

Sooo... Balach Swamp is also tainted? In fact, all swamps in general are tainted. Odd. I thought there was a mini-swamp in Seren.

Bug-infested quagmire.
Thousands of insects fly about this area, veiling all nuances of the surroundings. A pool in the centre of the room is carpeted entirely with several layers of eggs and corpses, appearing as a thick black and white froth constantly fluctuating in size. A persisting roar of sound and constant gusts of air only add to the unpleasant nature of the swamp, the result of the constant movement of so many tiny creatures.

In the depths of Balach Swamp.
The silent dripping of water from a nearby tree sends ripples flowing through the swamp water. Rotting twigs float along the surface of the stagnant liquid, intermingling with other debris in the shade of a weeping willow. A strange quiet pervades the area, enhanced by the presence of a thin fog that winds around the trunks of the large trees.

A large stagnant pond.
A giant pond of water sits in the centre of this room, a thin trail of solid ground skirting its edge. Giant piles of hatched insect eggs coat the ground, their tops barely bemerging from the sickly layer of fog rising from the depths of the pond. The smell of rot fills the room, coming from deep within the water.

And another swamp on an island in Bondero Bay:

Stepping stones through a swamp.
Numerous boulders protrude from the inky black waters of this swamp, providing a serviceable chain of stepping stones in an area otherwise impassible to foot traffic. Distant, ghostly lights can be seen to flare and fade at random, somewhere off in the deepening mists to the west, accompanied by a faint moaning sound that may be nothing more than the wind.

My point? Decaying things happens in nature. It is a natural event. Swamps are also natural. I've got mini-swamp-type-area up behind my house IRL. No Kethuru came out of space to use that area as a toilet. Tree branches fall into the swamp and rot, because-- horror of horrors-- a swamp is WET. Your point: Invalid.

Munsia, please offer constructive comments to what I'm finding to be a very interesting discussion, or don't offer comments at all. There's no reason to pick at an inflammation. Though this has obviously traveled far from the original point of the topic, I'm finding it well thought out and reasoned on all sides, and am interested to see where it will go.

Te-hee, poor Eventru. It's almost like he's running for president.

I still haven't heard any response as to how "wholly new" is ambiguous. That is -less- ambiguous than any of our real life examples so far (yes even your flobaru ). Recreation is on a whole other level from baking, cooking, fermenting, or anything and that was implied clearly in the post. Think more in terms of creating new matter, since that was sort of their job as goddesses and they had done it before.

Be that as it may, I certainly have more evidence in the events posts, changing of descriptions, skills, and so forth to support it being clearly different than you do for it being the same... that's just a fact. If it was meant to remain ambiguous, why would they make an effort to remove the taint from everything Glomdoring? That seems like express action to the contrary.

I am not trying to argue that taint wasn't in the equation, but looking at it objectively... what characteristics does the wyrd share in common with the taint? Are you hating what the taint does, or the word itself? Is your definition of taint so ambiguous (god am I tired of this word) that you can not seperate the two and admit that they simply aren't the same thing now?

I suppose I'm just missing how not knowing for sure is immediately something to be hated. I know that change and breaking routine is scary for some people, but I just don't think such biased opinions are researched well enough for me to give any overwhelming merit to. (not necessarily yours in particular)

As to your Flobaru and not wanting to try it, in olden days... I'm sure you would have starved to death if you only wanted to eat berries that you had personally eaten before and were convinced of their safety! (imagine if the first human had been too afraid to eat anything )

"Be that as it may, I certainly have more evidence in the events posts, changing of descriptions, skills, and so forth to support it being clearly different than you do for it being the same... that's just a fact. If it was meant to remain ambiguous, why would they make an effort to remove the taint from everything Glomdoring? That seems like express action to the contrary.
"

When illith sucked up taint, remeber that brennan and rowena and Crow all changed. I'm not sure if some rooms in the forest did as well.

Not quite. All that effort was made because it *had* to be made for it to be ambiguous-- if even *one* line mentioned it being tied to the Taint, there would be no ambiguity and that entire sequence of events is worthless.

I, personally (for numerous reasons), don't feel that it's Taint any longer on an OOC level. Most of those reasons are already described up above. However, there are reasons for saying that it is, and it's meant to be like that for these OOC discussions: It wasn't all that fun (for most people) to deny that taint didn't exist in the Glomdoring when it clearly did from the players' standpoints. If there was an admin-confirmation that it was no longer Taint (real admin, not just the opinions of Gods), then those who roleplay that it is would be in the same boat.

I think it makes the whole thing much more interesting as-is, actually.

Wow,MASSIVE derailing. I wonder how long Arix will last in Glomdoring after he tells people that the reason he's so comfortable there is because he's used to the Taint by now.

Not long

Whether or not the Wyrd is Tainted is, from an OOC perspective, wholly ambiguous. This is by design. Also note the Gods in Lusternia are also not infallible or incapable of lying, so anything that one God may say (e.g., the sky is red) may or may not necessarily be true. If you choose to believe that God is really up to you.

Since this thread has long-since veered away from the topic of Eventru and into the realm of IC debate over the nature of the wyrd, I'm going to close it. It really is an interesting discussion, but it should be taken up in the game rather than on the forums. Put that public newsboard to some use!