Synl never really got a vote on our culture to begin with. I'm not worried about you being at odds with me.

That's cause I'm my own culture. Sort of like how Exeryte did things, you know.

For those of you just tuning in, this is just Synl being the little brother I never wanted. Ignore him. He likes it.

I, as a player, see the Wyrd as something the Taint couldn't fully kill off. That is, the Wyrd as always existed in some form, be it base life or some kind of energy. When all else was gone (Gloriana, original states of various things) the Wyrd came up and grew with the power of Viravain (and a lesser extent, Isune) and things like the Seal of Nature.

I, as Ayisdra, see the Wyrd as a gift from Viravain after She cleansed the forest of the left over that didn't go away after it destroyed Gloriana.

Eh. Viravain didn't see the taint, and so Her followers didn't, either. That's why we of the Old Regime don't acknowledge the taint ever being there. If we did, She'd zap us. We see the Glomdoring as beautiful in every way; it's the only perfect thing that we can count on when the world around it has things like taint and bad food.

The lesser New Age culture is flawed. The Wyrd is new and came after the taint (we watched it happen!).

Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.

Also, I always subscribed to New Age, even when I was old.

I feel like Cardinal Wolsey sometimes.

Stop trying to rewrite history, heathens.

The way it was explained to me as a character (way back in my noob-days) was that Gloriana was forced to evolve in order to be able to resist the Taint. As such, the Wyrd, and through it Glomdoring, was born.

As for the player perspective... well, to be frank, I don't care if it's tainted or not.

My Glommie character sees the Wyrd as a physical manifestation of the perfection of beauty and nature that is the Glomdoring. In her mind, there's no difference between the two, except that the Wyrd is also a concept and she uses the words 'Glomdoring' and 'Wyrd' interchangeably when talking a lot. To her, trying to take the Wyrd out of the Glomdoring would be like trying to take wet out of water.

As for the Taint, that's something that happened to the Gloriana Forest, so it has nothing to do with the Glomdoring Forest, in her mind.

The wyrd is a gaseous mauve fertilizer. It's made from inert taintstuff, changed by some sort of unknown trick by Viravain, Isune, and the Wyrm/Wyrdling. It's a really awesome fertilizer. Everything grows better in Glomdoring. Xavius always held that, and always gave funny looks to people who claimed to worship or idolize the wyrd.

I always saw Wyrd as just the darker side of nature, the fury of wild beasts, the idea that nature will kill you dead if you look at it crosswise.

That person was wrongo. The Wyrd came after Glomdoring. It's why the mantra used to be 'Nothing matters but Glomdoring' and not 'Nothing matters but the Wyrd.'

One of the more recent developments in the Glomdoring culture illustrates that everything is connected under one big umbrella of things that make up the Glomdoring. Lhiannan is the Glomdoring, Viravain is the Glomdoring, we are the Glomdoring, etc-- the true essence of a hippie commune.

Druken struggles with that concept because of Viravain's sacrifice for the survival of the Glomdoring, which proved that we can all die separate deaths and the Glomdoring will keep on going. Viravain is the Glomdoring's creator, so if She can die and it can live afterward, it must be bigger than we are and that we are all merely its servants.

It's the Basin's biggest, most ferocious cockroach and we are merely feeding it. I, the player, always get a kick out of Serenwilde and Co condemning the Glomdoring as a plight on the Basin because that's what it is; it's an infestation of immorality, injustice and taint all tightly-bound and fed by a newfangled fertilizing agent we call the Wyrd. Our characters just don't see it that way.

I always look at Serenwilde as supposed to be that. Seren doesn't have aggro creatures, but nature isn't snuggly. It will :censored: you up, son.

I like this better than the 'you don't matter' idea, personally. My character believes that each person/spirit/divine/etc. is part of what makes up Glomdoring. Sure you could take bits of it out and it'd still go on because there's still all the other parts, but each part is an intrinsic piece of the whole. Frankly, I'd have trouble caring about doing work for something that didn't care if I were around to work for it or not.

At the heart of things, that's what all of the organizations are about. The Glomdoring is (or was) just up front about it so people don't let their self-pride ruin things.

Glomdoring beliefs about pride:

Pride --> self-importance --> power-mongering --> personal gain --> deviation from the cause (loosely defined as Glomdoring's conquest)

People stop serving the Glomdoring if they serve themselves! That's the topical message. Things are more fun when people promote this ideal but instead do exactly the opposite. It's why arguments between Yeralih/Xavius and Shayle/Xenthos were so much fun. Both sides promoted the same set of beliefs, in their own ways, but neither side really, truly followed them.

Just so everyone's clear-- this was really just an example of what Glomdoring's history USED to be. It's like social studies class in American high schools, where we all learned about Manifest Destiny and the Civil War. It's not a reflection of what it is now. The only thing that Druken still rails against is the idea that the taint exists in the Glomdoring, anywhere at all. If a resurgence of the Old Ways DID happen, he wouldn't try to stop it, but that's unlikely now that Glomdoring doesn't have to play the martyr anymore.

The mass delusional aspect to Glomdoring was one of the most fun parts in it to play, and False Memory was easily my favorite Aspect of Crow.

Druken, thank you for posting this. It's really cool to know there are people still carrying the banner of Glomdoring's core concepts.

I did not even have to post for the departure, it seems.

It all seems pretty well summarized.

I wasn't drunk when I wrote all of that. I should lie and say I had been drinking just so the yucky grammar makes more sense. Oh well. Caught up in the moment, I guess.

So true. The only things that ever does the lore on False Memory justice are those written by the Blacktalon.




Well, we can bring the era of Penumbra grilling back(this time I'll terrorize them into...WRITING!)

I want to attend a Druken story time, too.

Really interesting bit of RP, pity I managed to miss it.

Would have been fun to discuss too, considering the viewpoint expressed is almost the exact opposite to Mael's. He believes that only individuals and their interactions matter, leaving things like ideology and organizations like Glomdoring as just meaningless (though interesting) lies, worth only the value that people assign them.

Though he could certainly agree that to an ideology the individual doesn't matter. Eh, I suppose that's why he's the heretic he is.