The official scorecard on Celest and Mag willingly showing restraint is now Celest 2, Mag 1. Over the course of five years. Not that restraint is usually called for, and most people who ask for it overreact, but now both sides can officially say that sometimes they showed restraint, and sometimes they didn't, and the people they fight sometimes showed restraint, and sometimes they didn't, and future arguments can be made on merit instead of who did what more often.

EDIT: For the record, I don't think this was one of the times that it was needed. I think it would've been quicker to flame Ishant mercilessly.

The election was between Shaddus, Jigan and Thoros. Nariah wasn't running. Thoros was still active at that point and I don't think it was a big surprise to anyone that he won. Honestly there isn't a large number of people willing to take the job that are up for it - if any. A lot of Magnagorans would question whether Thoros was up for the job to begin with.

There are some interesting claims of Magnagora's health going on in this thread as well, and I'm not really sure how people are defining "healthy." From my perspective, things have been... better. For example, there's an Eventru shrine on Taurus with rooms that almost completely cover Capricorn and there haven't been any serious efforts to take it down. It's been there at least a week. just sayin.

Another indication of health is that the city hasn't had an acceptable candidate for Warlord(ess) in a long, long time, not including acceptable ones who don't want to run for it. Maybe my standards for acceptable are too high but that's just my opinion.

I know who was in the election. I also know who is in Magnagora that is capable of the job. I stated Nariah as someone who I would elect over Thoros. Not as someone who contested Thoros.

I think you have a victim complex. You seem to think that you should be protected from failure because you simply exist. I mean seriously, if you live in a city that has countless defenses (shrines, guards, statues, etc) and you fail to use them effectively to guard single rooms then that's your fault (your=organization as a whole). Likewise, I think you need to read the Lusternian histories. Celest may have squabbles with Serenwilde here and there, but we not fundamentally opposed to them. Why would we waste our energy trying to war them when our goal according to the histories is to destroy the Taint.

It's much like saying: The United States should pick on Great Britain because North Korea needs time to regroup - it just doesn't make any sense.

I likewise contend that Magnagora has ~1,100,000 power (and would have 1 million power if it hadn't ascended Thoros). I don't think that matches up with my definition of "being destroyed and robbed of all your power."

Can we be Canada.

I don't want to be French.

No. What about France?

What, France can't even win wars. Glomdoring is France. On second thought, I'm good with the UK.

Carry on, back to griefing and whatever.

Glomdoring's got the culture, the shameless pricks, and the women you can't help but love. Glomdoring can be France.

Anyways, the histories could be more easily read as New Celest wants to make amends for the damage caused by the Celestine Empire. This probably does not include the abject destruction of Magnagora.

No, I don't want to have the nasal accent. Can we be Italy?

As for something the administration could do, I think it should use it's divine influence to send a unified message on all fronts: If someone wants to help you, stop being so damn prideful and consider it.

One thing I notice in other IRE games that keeps them healthy is that people like me can jump ship with ease. Bored of being on the winning side - congrats, the losing side just recruited you to stabilize their situation. The justification for this simple: no matter if someone has harmed your organization, you get more out of putting them to work than letting them continue to beat your face inside out. It's also healthy for the game as a whole because it means guild changes, which in turn means credits, credits, credits.

For whatever reason though, it's retardedly hard to this in Lusternia. I don't know if we are just an exceptionally bitter folk, but it's one major reason that shifts in power aren't as transient as they could be.

Ok. I'll go ahead and state that it's difficult (some might call it impossible) to elect someone who doesn't run. Just out of curiosity, who else do you consider capable of the job? I'd like to see how closely your list matches mine, especially since I don't really consider

'Magnagoran raiders' - unless you're counting barely active ones, but then the list would be even longer.

I mean seriously Rakor ,lol? Who couldn't do a better job that someone inactive?

Rakor will soon challenge for Warlord and rule Magnagora with an iron fist of prosperity, bringing the tainted bastion of filth a new Golden Age

Ishant, all I've to say on the matter is, your arguments for restraint would be far more compelling were they not advocating for an organization that, but a few months ago, nightly stomped the crud (and yes, this includes things like trolling about water for essence runners) out of the oganization that is now on the offensive. But that's been said repeatedly already, in one form or another.

Some day, Mag Jeebus will return, and I fully expect you to advocate just as strongly on whoever happens to be on the underside of his heavily artied boot at that time.

And who indeed should that be? If the metaphorical deck of Lusternia were shuffled a bit, that might even be a question without a brazenly obvious answer. (see folks, that is what you call a "segue". A segue is a method of smoothly transitioning from one topic to another. A segue allows the host or writer to naturally proceed to another topic without jarring the audience. A good segue makes the subject change seem like a natural extension of the discussion. The more you know! ====(star) ).

The only way to really pull apart the natural tendancy for alliance here is to strongly incentivize people away. Right now, the benefits to alliance are substantial enough that we are likely to forgive even grevious offenses. I mean, I would imagine that, even if Serenwilde were to, say, assault and drive away or kill the guardians of an entrapped and wounded Supernal, and then, say, brand that supernal in such a way that puts him or her in a state of constant pain, purely for the purpose of preventing the Supernal from doing something that it never really did anyway, even then, I would wager that even in such an extreme scenario, Celest would wipe a bit of amnesia dust in it, borrow a smidge of false memory perhaps, and get on with things.

Because, strictly practically speaking, there is no incentive to do otherwise, and every incentive to carry on with alliance-like actions.

So, in a world where the enchantment/alchemy issue has been resolved (because that's a whole other (but related) thing), what would create incentives away from a reliable state of collusion?

A few premises leap out at me:

-It can't be purely or mostly either RP or "moral" grounds. The former winds up being worked around in the name of practicality, and the latter as well, though the latter also, due to the set up of the world, impacts some organizations far more than others, which is a recipe for long term failure.

-It could to provide a neutral, single org benefit, or a malus to all other organizations. The Tainted Broadcaste Center would be a good example, if it wasn't a lopsided mess of crap due to the taint element. The benefit would have to be strong enough to overcome the tendancy against rocking the boat, and the quest should probably require more than one or two people to pull off, to prevent the "lone crazy idiot" scenarios (again, an arguable failing of the TBC).

-Any incentive would need to have the attribute of fun, as opposed to other popular attributes such as mind-numbing, jackass-cluster-, and poorly-balanced-grief-monkey-magnet.

-Some RP element needs to happen, and there should be a good way out of doctrinal logic traps that doesn't lean on the moral ambiguity crutch. So, while you're probably not going to create a scenario where Celest can justify using taint, you can and have crafted ones where Seren and Glom work together.

-I'm pretty much out of steam here and am going to make Ravioli.

I am not sure if you actually read what you originally quoted or even paid attention to the context. My whole point was Magnagora could have removed Thoros, they didn't. There was an election, instead of people who were capable of doing the job stepping up to do the job, the election bombed. This was the whole point.

Whether someone ran in an election or not does not change the fact of if they are capable of doing the job and if they had run in the election if my vote would have been for them.

As for the raiders, again, 4 months ago they were raiding hardcore and constantly. No, they are not today's raiders, but that doesn't change the fact they were yesterday's raiders.

IRL, the idea is to make the other country do what you want. There are also lives and risk and war is overall very very nasty and horrible. In the online game Lusternia, the players know that they are never going to get what they want out of the other country, that no real lives are ever at risk and that engaging in the virtual stabbing of people can be fun and is totally harmless. The only issues are "Is this fun?" and "Can we make this more fun than it is?"

It makes perfect sense for the players to OOCly contrive a reason to shake things up for the sake of making things more fun. It also makes sense to make and break alliances alot more often than would be done IRL.

Out of all that I got this...


Bring me food!

It's you. Really. I have been enemied to every org and guild in Lusternia except the Harbingers and the four monk guilds, but I could join any org except Serenwilde with little more than a tell. Serenwilde would probably let me in with a couple hoops to jump through. No one wants to be associated with you. You may not be the biggest bastard in Lusternia, but you are the only right bastard with enough talent to back up his raw bastardishness with acts of true bastardry.