Caverns of Muhanlesh.

I've played another IRE game before, yet I now want to try my hands on something new so I figured I'd try Lusternia. I like much of the lore I've read already, but the files on the main page concerning some guilds/cities/whatnot seem partially outdated, so I thought I'd ask the forums.

I'm looking for a more benevolently aligned guild that does not revolve around combat too much, is not incredibly zealous in destroying the opposite side, allows for some personal freedom of choice and association, and definetly not something snuggly.

Any suggestions, maybe?

Hmm. Benevolently-aligned is interesting, and 'personal freedom of choice' doubly so. Do you have a particular play-style, i.e. do you prefer playing a more direct fighter, a battlefield-control mage, a combat-support bard...?

That's the whole point; I can't really focus on combat too much since my laptop can't handle a system and it's going to take a while before I'll get something better, so I'm mainly interested in the RP and maybe some bashing points of IRE games. To further narrow down things, though, I prefer magical/spiritual characters over the physical kind, it just suits me better, I guess. A scholarly guild would be nice.

Ok, that helps. While I'm sure you understand that no city/commune, and no guild, is unambiguously "good" at heart, the organizations that tend to be more benevolent on the surface are New Celest and Serenwilde, with Hallifax and Gaudiguch both somewhere around the middle; they're interesting cases. You've stated you want to avoid overt snuggliness, so I'd suggest keeping in mind that Serenwilde has a reputation for snuggliness, though a second opinion on that would be good.

With that in mind, the more scholarly/spiritual guilds you might want to have a look at are:

The Celestines (New Celest, Guardian): Aesthetically similar to stereotypical 'priest' guilds
The Aquamancers (New Celest, Mage): Manipulators of water, focus on scholarship

The Moondancers (Serenwilde, Wiccan): Mystical aesthetic, focus on community and spirituality

The Illuminati (Gaudiguch, Guardian): Creepy, cult sort of atmosphere, but pleasant enough to novices
The Pyromancers (Gaudiguch, Mage): Manpulators of fire. I'm not sure if they have the same focus on scholarship as the Aquamancers, though.

The Institute (Hallifax, Guardian): Least spiritual and most 'hard-science' of the guardian guilds, focus on SCIENCE. Aesthetically somewhat cliquish and meritocratic.
The Aeromancers (Hallifax, Mage): Manipulators of air, focus on scholarship, esp. philosophy, though there are quite a lot of 'artist' types there.

I know that's a lot, but hopefully this will give you something of an idea of the aesthetic you're looking for!

Pyro's manipulate fire, not water.

Alright, thanks, I'll consider these, then.

Firstly, I'm assuming Pyromancers manipulate fire, you probably made a slip there.

Aside from that, what are the philosophies of Hallifax and Gaudiguch? I can tell New Celest is a rather archetypical 'good' city, with light and happiness and love and all as their foremost principles, which I, in the end, find rather tiring. Playing people more to the neutral-good side of the spectrum is far more interesting, so what of Gaudiguch and Hallifax? What do they stand for?

Spiritual certainly sounds more like the Celestines or the 'dancers. All of the 'Caster' classes have some measure of "scholar" in them AFAIK, but the Researchers, Aeromancers, and Aquamancers generally bill themselves as the more knowledge oriented.

A word of caution, the Aquamancer advancement system is notoriously horribad.


EDIT: FWEEEE, Ninja'd.

FURTHER EDIT:

While New Celest seems like it should be overtly "Love and peace and puppies and SUNSHINE!", it really, REALLY isn't. The overtones for Celest's theology tend more toward Sala'adin than Pope John Paul II. Less about puppies and sunshine, more about atonement, purity, and piety. You can look over the help files for the pantheon of a given city for a better overview of the nuances of that city. For instance, Celest has or had Hajamin, Terentia, and Eventru in addition to Lyreth and Isune. Each of them has varying degrees of the 'Love and Peace' thing, with Lyreth's being likely the strongest and Hajamin and Terentia more toward the 'Purge the unclean' side of things.

Long story short, there's a lot going on in Celest beyond the stereotypical "goody-two shoes" "crystal dragon Jesus" fare.



Hallifax is...quite a bit more Science and knowledge oriented. Almost a meritocracy, but not quite. Almost communist, but not quite. The idea is that everyone has a place in the Collective, a niche where they are at their peak productive efficiency for Hallifax as a whole. Once you find this place, and are settled into it, you own it, and it owns you. You become your caste, if that makes sense. Individualism is both encouraged in the sense that you are encouraged to find your place in life, and discouraged in the sense that your individualism is only considered acceptable if channeled into being productive.

Long story short, Hallifax is a complex machine, which cares little for "good" or "evil" or "contentment" or "happiness" so long as you are an obedient, productive member of your caste.

I thought the whole point was that Aeromancers were supposed to be for the artists while the Institute was for the scholars.

Pyromancers are obviously the mages of fire, not water. They are also probably more aggressive than any of the other mage guilds, solely because of the fire element being more aggressive. Scuchidira fitted this.

While I may be biased, I think that the geomancers would be a good fit based on what you want. The members are very independent (almost notoriously so), scholarly, and not overly combat oriented.

To super-simplify things much farther than I think they should be simplified, where New Celest is aesthetically 'good' and Magnagora is aesthetically 'evil,' Hallifax is aesthetically 'order' and Gaudiguch is aesthetically 'chaos.' Think of Hallifax as Borg Soviet Russia with mad scientists and artists in a floating crystal city. Think of Gaudiguch as... you know, I need to get a snappy phrase for Gaudiguch. It's sort of like ancient egypt, if ancient egypt was based on Laveyan Satanism and full of so many secret societies it needs secret societies just to keep track of how many secret societies it has.

To put it another way, Hallifax is the incredibly-structured totalitarian Communist ""utopia"", while Gaudiguch is the unstructured, apparently-freewheeling Libertarian (in the classical sense) ""utopia"". Both can be played in a 'good/benevolent' sort of way; both have their dark secrets and can -easily- be played in a 'bad/malevolent/amoral' sort of way.

EDIT: And yes, Pyromancers are fire, not water. I fixed my typo, if you'll note.

Most of the Mages fit you fairly well, yes.

Lusternia is overall morally grey. Don't think of Celest as the goody goody city, think of them as the Spanish Inquisition.

Gaudiguch is Freedom for everyone. You know this to be true because you're, you know, not a member of the Illuminati or Templars that secretly control the city. Not that you know they control the city. Then you'll probably wake up in a ditch somewhere.

Hallifax is a collectivist/communist structure where every member belongs in a Caste, with the Artists and Scientists at the top.

In player-related experience, Gaudiguch is 10x more snuggly and 25% the RP of Hallifax. There's a crapload of drama in Gaudiguch too, as the city is on the brink of anarchy 24/7 by its very nature. People want to summarize the two as 'Chaos vs. Order', but this is really wrong - it's really 'Chaos vs. Harmony'. To a Gaudiguchian, this represents Growth/Freedom versus Stagnation/Oppression. To a Hallifaxian, this represents Frivolity/Disorder/Crime vs. Peace/Order/Justice.

edit: to clarify 'they're wrong' wasn't directed at Ileein, who ninja'd me, but a lot of others I've spoken to in the past, and it's built into a lot of the Illuminati lore.

Not that anyone knows what the Illuminati lore is, anymore. Sigh.

I don't see why couldn't every guild be on that list, to be honest. Shadowdancers would go as well - we at most have one active combatant these days. Rest is fancy rituals and whatnot!

@ileein

Personal opinion, but the generalizations don't really work. They are true on the surface only, if then.

Hey hey hey, just because I keep my head down doesn't mean I don't know Illuminati.

Yes, but for a new player making a first character, surface appearances mean a lot. You can't really sum up "the real story" in a few sentences, which is what's needed here. That comes with experience.

Back to simple questions quickly. What is the difference between jab and swing? is there any real difference in terms of pvp? i`ve asked the guides, and they didnt know. thanks in advance

This made me giggle so much, thank you.

Some wound afflictions can be scored on jabs, some on swings.

Which is important, depending on the archetype and what aff you are aiming for. Since I know Damel is a BM, using the strike syntax or lunge to target a specific limb will always result in a jab - BMs don't have a swing that hits a specific limb, but different swings that have varying probabilities of hitting a number of limbs. So to get swing affs as a BM, it's always a bit of a crap-shot.

As another example, PB cleave (which bypasses rebound/pentagram/circle all in one go) is a jab, while assault (the power skill) is a swing, but will only bypass rebounding (not pentagram/circle).