It's always been a great source of irritation to me that, when I played Lusternia, I had a lot of stuff, and never really did anything with it. I put in more dollars than sense, and a lot of my projects were never fully realized, or were poorly implemented by my younger self.

Now, I'm still largely inactive, and still sitting on a pile of assets whose worth is comparable to the GDP of a small country. As far as I know, I have one cartel of every type, the Merchant's Guild clan/cartel, a 120ish room manse, the clan for that manse, and the manse "tent", which contains most of the trade artifacts (sort of duplicating the Merchant's Guild Tradehall in Deepnight, but all in one room).

The Merchant's Guild was to be a trans-only cartel where we could share information about our crafts. It's always been exclusive, and we've charged an entry fee. The sub-cartels were supposed to be subsidiaries of the guild, each run by a trademaster from the guild. It's been surprisingly hard to find a good trademaster (I used to think you could hand people a cartel and they'd try to run it; most didn't!). The manse, Deepnight, was meant to be sort of a rogue's city. If you've been in there, you know I funded it, and had some vision, but never implemented it in any kind of a meaningful way. The other manse was a gift, and I only recently got around to giving it an actual name.

With that in mind, if anyone has any ideas for the future of these organizations, I'll listen to them. It could be a new idea, or something as simple as some room descriptions for blank rooms. I'd like to keep them all pretty close to what I'd wanted for them, but these groups need users; it'd be a shame to just let them sit. If you want to submit your idea or a proposal, email me at themidnightace -at- live -dot- com. Include your name, character's name, previous relevant experience (if any), previous experience with me (if any), and your idea. It should be something with some thought to it (no one liners!), but not a five page proposal. I would hate to see someone come up with something great, and then I went off on a tangent of my on regarding what to do with these.

Anyway, if this is your kind of thing, come up with something, and have some fun with it.

-R

Rent out deepnight as a pk ship for flares

Don't. That would be so retarded. How much hull would that SOB have? My god. I would cry.

Hull Strength : 7200

...

Perhaps the only manse that is bigger than the bubble it would be bombarding.

When I started, it took me a little bit to figure out what Deepnight is/was. Even so, it always has seemed that there are manses, and then there is Deepnight. It's sort of the Taj Mahal of Lusternia, a temple to gratuitousness.

Go tracker, set up webs of spring traps sending people into dead end monolith'd rooms locked behind reinforced doors. Rename the manse to "FREE POTIONS HERE". Start your own novice collection! Gotta catch 'em all!

I think you could probably at least try and reboot deepnight as a rogue city again just with a public post calling for... I dunno, Citizens again? No guarentee that what happened last time wont happen again but you wont know until you try.

What happened last time?

Turn it into a big brothel and gambling parlor.

And invite Ryan Stiles to make a character.

Having flown Deepnight around on the test server once or twice, I have to say that the huge hull does not make it a good ship.

And there's a lot of extra stuff in there that most people haven't seen, like the hidden, magical entrance to the tradehall.

Also, I used to be a tracker, and I have some pretty ridiculous stories; some of my best times in Lusternia were playing in Deepnight as a tracker.



That'd require a lot more personal intervention than I'm willing to give at the moment.



The city was always in some sort of trouble. Lusternia is very polar in its combat, and a wild card was never appreciated by any of the factions, sort of a "if you're not with us, you're against us" mentality. Also, I wasn't as good with people back then.



No to the brothel, and the gambling parlor already sort of exists, though, like most of the city, poorly implemented.

As for asking Ryan... I can see it now: I sit down in the green room before tomorrow's show and say, "Hey Ryan, have you ever considered playing a video game made of just words?." I'd get either a look of incredulity, or he'd made it into some sort of a sex joke.

I still envy you >:I RYAN FREAKING STILES...

But hey, it's worth a shot. I'm sure he would be entertained for five whole minutes.

It might be worth looking at the changes to manses-- I recall some changes that let non-owners change room descriptions (That were flagged as 'controlled' by that player), making things like Deepnight's room-rental stuff much more attractive.

-Echoes Taj Mahal statement-

Personally? I'd make a palace or shrine or something atop it, since Richter is a bit of a legend amongst shopkeepers/manse-makers, and maybe expand the Merchant's Guild again, since there's not really a comparable organization in the basin at the moment.

I always loved Deepnight as a rogue. It took me awhile to navigate, but the tradehall was easy to get into (I'm not sure, I suspect you musta told me how to get into once, Richter, but I forget) so useful as a rogue bookbinder. Go bookbind lots of shiny things.

I think it's hard to set up an organization for non-affiliated players for many reasons. Most players are rogues for individual reasons, and there's not really much out there to band them together.

My quick thoughts. You've spent a lot of money on Deepnight, but there's only so far you can take it. You're not active. To become a huge organization you'd need a charismatic person to lead it that also has a lot of time to invest. And with the two cities back, there's probably not a lot of unaligned rogues as their used to be.

I would suggest talking to the admin and asking if they could do something with it, with the caveat that you would give up control as long as they do something epic with it and make sure your role in creating Deepnight would be respected/acknowledged, even if it became independent. Considering how big it is, I could see a few possible plots--I have some plot ideas but I'd rather send them to the admin so. Deepnight could eventually become either its own Aetherbubble, maybe appear on another continent, or somewhere in Limbo. Perhaps it can even be populated and become a new influenced "village", or maybe become it's own entity with quests and the like. (As an aetherbubble, maybe it can actually contain a NPC store so people can "stay out" in space and buy food.) And I'm sure Estarra would at least entertain the possibilities, considering how much OOC cash you put into Lusternia to make this work--IIRC at one time you were thinking of converting Deepnight into a world area, although that didn't pan out.

If that wasn't possible or the admin aren't willing, maybe you could Directly talk to an Elder god and Donate it. Imagine if Deepnight became part of either Mysrai's or Elostian's Godrealms--hey, somebody's got to compete with Eventru, and I could see something like that working for them.

Note that I'm not saying donate all your assets. Keep the smaller manse, any other manses/ships you have, and your regular artifacts. But one thing to consider--game goods aren't physical, they are virtual, and if 10-20 years in the future this game reached an end of life and shut down (or was rebooted or re-imagined or something more optimistic), at the end of it all this is more like paying for a meal than buying a TV. Perhaps the best way to consider this is, while you would lose direct control of Deepnight, you would gain permanent in-game prestige--Richter would be remembered in the histories as the founder of Deepnight (and they should make sure you're legacy is preserved at some point), and it would have more of an impact on the game.

^This would be -so- badass if you did it and the admins went for it.

I like this.

I think the fact that he's spent so much money on it is exactly why they wouldn't let him relinquish it.

He got an emphatic 'no' when he asked about the possibility of having it turned into an actual player org.

That's actually not the case at all. I abstained from asking them for a long time, because I felt like I didn't put in the required effort. It was kind of like being in an art class, having bought out the local craft store, and not wanting to show the teacher, because you never did anything with it.

There was one occasion where I asked Estarra about it, after one of the player meetings. My question was something along the lines of "if I actually did this right, and submitted a proposal to you, what would you say?" and the response was something along the lines of "no guarantees, but I'd at least look at it" (I am totally paraphrasing). Not that long after, I think I went inactive. So, the foremost reason this never turned into anything was my own laziness, not because I asked and was shot down.