Hello,

For a time now I have been thinking over the RP concepts, basis and culture of both Gaudiguch and Hallifax compared to the other Orgs of the basin, and I see a major flaw. Sorry for this being somewhat long but it does explain it all.

When you consider it, when one thinks of Celest they quickly think of Light and Purity, when one thinks of Magnagora they quickly think of Taint and Death and so on. Yet when one thinks of Gaudiguch and Hallifax, what is there exactly there? There are always difference opinions and theories yet no real basis for each (mostly Gaudiguch).

A rather important point to mention is the rivalry in Lusternia's city/commune systems. It is this rivalry that keeps the excitement of an enemy to assault and be victorious against alive in the game.

When you consider it, Celest and Magnagora are obviously enemies in every way, Light vs Dark, Purity vs Corruption, Life vs Death. If anything Magnagora is Celest's evil twin, and vice versa in almost every way. For this reason it is only natural that Magnagora and Celest would be at each others throats. The same can be said for Serenwilde and Glomdoring, Nature vs Corrupted Nature, Natural growth vs Wyrd.

These organizations make sense to have feuds between them, as every aspect of them is anathema to their rival. Now consider Hallifax and Gaudiguch, they had a misunderstanding in the taint wars and now must forever hate each other....

I have had people actually mention and ask why we simply do not make peace with Hallifax, and it does become rather difficult to constantly give reasons to try and keep the rivalry there. I mean Hallifax likes being logical and Gaudiguch (supposedly) likes being frivolous, so they should despise one another? Hallifax likes to experiment with science, and Gaudiguch has some mobs that like giving enlightened sayings, so they should stab at each other? The whole fight conflict that happened between them during the taint wars and also Tzaraziko's race (which no one really seems to care about sadly) are somewhat small aspects that are barely keeping the reason for rivalry alive there.

Perhaps if Gaudiguch and Hallifax's core ideals and basis are made more clear somewhat then the reason for them to be anathema to each other would become more apparent, but so far I truly do not see much reason for it. I mean heck if anything it is Magnagora that seem to have a bone to pick with Gaudiguch and not Hallifax these days...

I would like to push this point further by mentioning the cosmic planes of each (which tends to be in relation to the religious aspects of that city).

Celest has Celestia, the plane of light, which Celest devotes themselves to and see it in a way as heaven to us. The celestines gain their powers from Celestia and it is by celestia's teachings that Celest pushes forward in the Basin for the light and purity.

Magnagora has Nil, the tainted plane (also assumed by some the plane of evil), Which has the Demon lords that Magnagora worship. The nihilists gain their powers from Nil and Magnagora live by their aspects of corruption and Death, and push forward to spread the taint.

Now we come to Gaudiguch, Gaudiguch has Vortex; a plane of flesh with these pots that hold certain types of flesh.... then what? We know the Illuminati use this flesh and harvest the fleshpots, but exactly why do they? Also what teachings are spread forth for Gaudiguch to live from this plane to begin with? Exactly what is Gaudiguch's core basis that it builds up on? How is Vortex (and flesh in general) even connected to Gaudiguch to begin with?

Same with Hallifax, Hallifax has Continuum; a Crystal plane that has spheres that they use to energize gems from....what for? The institute also harvests these gems that they use... oookay. Now it is a bit clearer for Hallifax, since they are mostly about science, and the spheres can simply be them studying something they discovered, not to mention Continuum was the crèche of Xyl which as you all know is the elder god that sharded into the lucidian race. Yet still the aspect that no teachings or real basis is made apparent from Continuum comes into mind. Not to mention how does Aeonics come into play to have meaning in Hallifax to begin with? Paradigmatics somewhat makes sense for Gaudiguch, but Aeonics? Not sure.

Discuss if you like please, hopefully everything I said is clear enough to get my meaning across.

I have had this problem as well. Newbies ask why we're at war with Gaudiguch, and I generally just tell them to read the histories and a few event posts, because honestly, the hell if I know. It's hard coded in, that's all there is to it. You could talk about individualism versus collectivism, but there's not really enough there to make a case for eternal opposition. We can rationalize working with any other org, what makes Gaudiguch so different?

I always saw them as Order (Halifax) versus Chaos (Gaudiguch). Halifax has rules for everything, Gaudiguch is pretty much anarchy, to give an example. I think the part where they want to destroy each other lies in that they fundamentally disagree with systems and feel the opposing one growing in power may put them at risk.

We even have rules for making new rules!

Racial tensions are a strong background into it from the histories. It also wasn't just a small misunderstanding in the histories either. For a more modern perspective you could argue that Hallifax restricts too many freedoms, plus the whole slavery thing, and Gaudiguch is the land of the free. Individual versus collective and all that. It's a bit late to think more on it and I don't know enough about Hallifax off the top of my head to say something for them.

While not wanting to go to deep in to it, I find Hallifax VS Gaudiguch one of the most realistic conflicts.

The shortest way I can describe it is logic VS morality.
Which can also be written as 'I do because I am commanded or gain this benefit' VS 'I do because it is the right thing to do'
or 'persuit of external truth' VS 'persuit of internal truth'


Incidently Gaudiguch's freedom isn't freedom in the sense of doing what you want. Rather in that freedom its members chose to act 'morally' which is far more restrictive than any lawbook in the world.

If you want to go to an extreme: Hallifax is the scientist that want to finish a project at any cost. Gaudiguch is the bhuddist monk.

Hallifax and Gaudiguch did not get along LONG before the Taint Wars. You can tell by reading the histories--both are paranoid that the other is out to get them, and in fact, they each were.

They are opposites just like the cities and communes are. Serenwilde doesn't hate Glomdoring because Glomdoring attacks them. They hate them because of the ideals they represent, and the corruption of nature they produce (from their point of view). Magnagora doesn't hate Celest because they are at war, it's because the Light is contrary to what they believe.

This is definitely evident in Hallifax and Gaudiguch. Hallifax is the city of strict social castes, slavery, order, and logic. Gaudiguch is the city of freedom, chaos, and passion. Gaudiguch couldn't live in a world in which Hallifax controls everything--it's completely unthinkable. Likewise, Hallifax could not survive in a world that was as free and "frivolous" as Gaudiguch, because it is dangerous to their Collective ideals.

The RP is laid out plainly. Whether people follow it is a player problem. But of all the cities/communes, Hallifax and Gaudiguch have the deepest, longest rivalry. Theirs existed long before the Taint Wars, while the others only came up after it.

I have this really long rant about differing philosophies that can not be reconciled and which are anathema to each other that I always give people when they ask about that ingame. My character is very obviously and loudly anti-Gaudiguchi. On a very basic level, from his point of view (which is rather closeminded) he believes that the main difference is that Hallifax seeks an objective Truth and understanding about the world through the lenses of Art and Science, while Gaudiguch ignores the search of an objective Truth to seek enlightenment in "hollow spiritual practices and glorification of subjective realities as being all equally valid". These two philosophies can not be reconciled and exist side by side, since they are anathema of each other, the existence of Gaudiguch denies everything that (to him) Hallifax stands for and probably vice versa. Search for a somewhat objective Truth versus search for spiritual fulfillment in accepting the equal validity of different interpretations of the Truth.

Other people have other reasons, probably, but he always thought that made tons of sense.

Some rather good points have been made, but in the end when taking Hallifax and Gaudiguch into perspective, it seems they would rather be more content to simply ignore the other in live on. My issue is there seems to be no real reason for each to say "Must obliterate Gaudiguch/Hallifax and everything/everyone in it!". The whole taint war fight thing and displacing the other in time and space is a somewhat reason that is slowly dying and being forgotten. Also I know Gaudiguch and Hallifax ancestors had issues before the taint wars and even before the cities existed, but also mentioned in the histories is that they rather got along well in the deserts before the feuds happened concerning which race Tzaraziko belongs/belonged to.



This actually seems like some good reasons that I wished were more fleshed out IG between the two.

Actually, one of the things I like about the Hallifax/Gaudiguch conflict is how blurry the line gets at times. They're both after the same thing, in one way or another- perfection of thought (in Hallifax this is especially true with the Aeromancers). The problem is that their methods for getting there are so outright offensive to the other side that it makes tensions build. Add in the things like Tzaraziko's ambiguous race, and you've got a case of tension-over-time that causes actual conflicts to break out in the real world. No clear-cut-seeming "light vs dark" surface to thin things out to, but an actual, complex conflict that is smudged with grey areas, and built upon differences in perspectives pertaining to the same goals.

It's fun.

Well, I can think of one good reason that the cities are doing their best to destroy each other. Paradox/Crucible. Wars are pretty easy to start, it just takes a spark to get them going.

There's absolutely no reason that we Hallifaxians shouldn't get along with Gaudiguch. I mean, it's not like they have any nefarious plans to destroy our city.
Oh, right. They do have that big superweapon, Project Paradox, pointed straight at the Matrix. But I'm sure they don't plan to use it.
Oh, wait, scratch that, they already did. Several times.
Ok, yes, we DO have our superweapon aimed at the Eternal Flame, but that's just a holdover from ancient times. It wasn't being actively maintained, and we didn't even know how to use the thing until just recently. It definitely wasn't a threat to them.
Why is it being activated now? Because of repeated assaults against the Matrix by those sneaky lizard people, of course. WE weren't the agressors. We're only defending ourselves!

Now, I only know things from the Hallifaxian side, but I'm sure you could make an argument much the same way from Gaudiguch's side, saying how senseless acts of Hallifaxian aggression and repeated raids on the Vortex (by, I don't know, Prav and company?) were too much to bear, and forced a response using the strongest weapon they had availible; Project Paradox. And now the Hallifaxians have responded in kind, so they can't discard their greatest weapon against the Hallifaxian menace.

You could use such reasoning to start a war with pretty much any city/commune in the basin, but at the end of the day, Gaudi poses the greatest threat to Hallifax because only they can attack the Matrix directly, and vice versa. Neither side would disarm its superweapon with the other side still having theirs, there's too much mistrust on both sides. And generations of bad blood between the Dracnari and the Lucidians is not helping matters an iota.

It should also be noted - from a psychological perspective - that people generally are far more hostile to those who are different from another in ambiguous ways. Gaudiguch and Hallifax both have many points of commonality that are divided by perspective - their search for a nebulous 'Truth'. It's because we can both see that and yet at the same time go 'but why don't they see it our way?' that also lends itself to a more realistic conflict, I think. Of course I have a bias for such psychological answers.

I think Arcanis's underlying point, which is a good one, is that while Hallifax and Gaudiguch do have obvious ideological differences, the Halli vs. Gaudi conflict lacks the sense of life-or-death struggle embodied by the Celest vs. Mag and the Seren vs. Glom conflicts. While it is easy to justify conflict between Halli and Gaudi, it is much harder to justify a state of perpetual total war than it is with the other pairs, but the mechanics are still set up in the same way.

We should declare peace and go into a Cold War. We can have our superweapons pointed at each other, but be absolutely cordial and nice. We'll try to destroy each other with covert actions. It will be glorious.

I always just assumed it was blatant racism against lizards/crystals/birds and democracy vs communism.

EDIT: A more serious thought, Seren vs. Glom and Celest vs. Mag are closer to theological conflicts I say, which are pretty easy to get behind and keep going with illogical zealotry.

Gaudi and Hallifax seem to be more political and idealogical differences, which I guess are harder to be fanatic about.

Also the thread was tl;dr, sorry if I repeated anybody's thoughts.

It is incredieasy to be very fanatic about it if you are very fascinated by political philosophy.

All it will take is a little nudging from one side or the other to get things moving. How many times have alliances been made and broken?

The foundation is set. Get the pieces moving. Trust me, it doesn't take much for sides to turn on each other.

I like the grey areas, personally. It makes it more of a realistic conflict, to me-- after all, people rarely have clear-cut reasons for hating each other in real life. It also makes it more possible for there to be a desperate-circumstances alliance without completely setting aside RP (at least, setting aside RP slightly less), which is something events periodically make us do.

I do, too. I'm just pointing out that the basis for all out conflict is there, so if that's where the cities wanted to go, it would be easy to do. But a truce could happen too. Neither of these options are permanent. I simply disagree that the RP driving Gaudi and Halli is intrinsically too weak to allow either of them. If people don't feel like there is enough culture and RP in a place, it's up to them to fix it.

I've linked this before, but this is the best way to describe Halli/Gaudi.