I'm kind of curious, to the other Serens. If you were given the option to make the Seren stand for/represent something, what would you choose it to be? Ignoring the practicality of making that happen, I wonder what you all want it to stand for.

Personally I would like something that can kinda unite the almost disparate tribes of the forest. A concept that is pervasive within the forest already that could be revealed slowly as being sourced from *insert faeword here*. So that the process of moving to this new rp is less about changing the forest to something new but rather rediscovering our connection to something that has always been there.

I have a vague idea that could be worked on, but this is kinda awkward to discuss on public forums.

Oh boy, this thread could be disastrous! Hopefully not though. It's interesting that Serenwilde is having something of an identity crisis, because their mission statement has always seemed so clear, maybe the most clear of all the orgs - protect and preserve the purity of nature, which extends to the great spirits and the fae. The current political scheme has really not served Serenwilde well in terms of honoring this identity. From my outside perspective, it just seems like you have no common ground with your allies except for common enemies... and of course since the game is so org-based, and so also alliance based... it seems as though the focus there has shifted not from what you're fighting for but just who you're fighting against, creating a situation where your org's identity and its personal goals are just lost in the shuffle.

I think its wrong to ask for admin help unless you're actually prepared to accept it. I freely admit to not being in the know on this issue, but I'm under the impression that Hoaracle tried to be a guiding rp hand in this and was basically told to stfu as the message received didn't jive with the players' need for alliance support. While players are free to shift in a different direction, until they actually make that decision, and start acting on it as a group, you can't expect or demand further 'interference'. The gods aren't shopgirls that will keep throwing outfits at you until you find one that you can wear. You pick, and then they will be happy to help you find shoes to go with it, I'm sure. :)

I hope you guys do hash out a bit more of what you want to see, and there's really no reason why you shouldn't do it on the forum... I doubt anyone would judge you harshly for wanting to improve your org's rp, plus, you can leave your tree-snuggling curmudgeon personas aside here and have a real discussion. I just hope you don't get derailed too much (sorry if I did), good luck!

Talan:

Oh boy, this thread could be disastrous! Hopefully not though. It's interesting that Serenwilde is having something of an identity crisis, because their mission statement has always seemed so clear, maybe the most clear of all the orgs - protect and preserve the purity of nature, which extends to the great spirits and the fae. The current political scheme has really not served Serenwilde well in terms of honoring this identity. From my outside perspective, it just seems like you have no common ground with your allies except for common enemies... and of course since the game is so org-based, and so also alliance based... it seems as though the focus there has shifted not from what you're fighting for but just who you're fighting against, creating a situation where your org's identity and its personal goals are just lost in the shuffle.

I think its wrong to ask for admin help unless you're actually prepared to accept it. I freely admit to not being in the know on this issue, but I'm under the impression that Hoaracle tried to be a guiding rp hand in this and was basically told to stfu as the message received didn't jive with the players' need for alliance support. While players are free to shift in a different direction, until they actually make that decision, and start acting on it as a group, you can't expect or demand further 'interference'. The gods aren't shopgirls that will keep throwing outfits at you until you find one that you can wear. You pick, and then they will be happy to help you find shoes to go with it, I'm sure. :)

I hope you guys do hash out a bit more of what you want to see, and there's really no reason why you shouldn't do it on the forum... I doubt anyone would judge you harshly for wanting to improve your org's rp, plus, you can leave your tree-snuggling curmudgeon personas aside here and have a real discussion. I just hope you don't get derailed too much (sorry if I did), good luck!

You've actually hit the nail on the head with your statement about Serenwilde.

We protect and preserve the purity of nature... but what will ackleberry do? (this is a valid question due to fae shenanigans in the past)
We protect the fae... against the cities because protecting them from Glomdoring when they want to go there is against our beliefs.

Given this, we must fight against Glomdoring they are an abomination but we also need to fight against the cities for the same reason. We also need to protect the fae but we lost much of the right to do so against Glomdoring years ago. Realistically the only alliance which might make some sense is with Celest, but that ship has sailed and we need to ally with whoever we can... to protect nature and the fae.

I also feel the need to specify the type of help that we're asking for, I want to see an OOC discussion with the players, the Serenwilde pantheon and Estarra (at the least for admin involvement). A development of a concept where the players are actively engaged and contributing rather than asking for help then having the admin drop something on us which might not work. (As an aside I wasn't actually in serenwilde when hoaracle returned so I don't really know what happened.)

The issue is that it is almost unreasonable to expect for Serenwilde to ic'ly coming up with a concept that is akin to the fundamental parts of the other orgs and players will always be concerned when trying to that an admin could just walk up and say that their work is invalid. (Hopefully they wouldn't but... it has happened)

I have a vague idea and a method for implementation, the problem is that asking for this stuff publicly on the forums diminishes the potential impact of the event, possibly to the point that you could just dump what is developed.

Yeah, every time someone complains about our ally of the month I just want to smack people around. With a strict interpretation of our RP, we should be opposed to every other org in the game. That's simply not fun though. I don't really see any ideas from the other IREs, either. The "Nature needs allies" issue seems to get solved a lot by "Poof! Another nature commune for you to ally with!" which isn't actually a solution. It'd be like splitting Serenwilde in half and saying that it's all good now, Northern and Southern Serenwilde each have an ally.

I'm burned out pretty completely on politics in Serenwilde, even within a single guild, so the best I can really do here is wish everyone good luck and hope changes happen for the better eventually.

This thread has been hijacked.

RE:Cities. I feel that Serenwilde actually has more cause to ally with any given city then with Glomdoring, if all the politics were reset. Even more so with Magnagora, though you'll have to hear me out on all of this.

Generally, the main problem with the cities is that they overdo it. From a druid/mage standpoint, we acknowledge that the four elements that mages tie into are in fact part of nature. The flaw of the mages is that they focus on only one element and overdo it. Water is necessary, flooding things is not, and so on. Auseklis' problem with cities is that they hide essential functions, they pretend to be civilized but essentially.... they have to defecate like the rest of us. They just close their eyes to what is actually necessary. This means that cities are bad, but it's more like a willful ignorance, it's a major issue but it's something that we can pity the cities for. Glomdoring on the other hand represents looking at and knowing nature and then going ahead and changing it from the source.

Looking at the traditional cities, it's actually best for us (ideologically) to ally with Magnagora, for the following reason: The Taint is obvious. If you are going to hold that all other nations are fundamentally flawed and that the concepts they all stand for are 'evil' in some way, why pick the creeping and insidious evil? The Light sounds like a good idea, but it's fairly easy to take it too far, to the point where you have an overbearing leadership that decides what is right and just for the people, and you've got crusades and zealotry all over and so on. No, pick the giant bombastic tentacle'd evil! Far less chance of your people being truly swayed to the other side that way. So.. I really don't get the "Should be allied with Celest" buisness. They are a worse pick over all (the people aside >_>).


The problem with 'protecting nature' is that, unlike all of the other concepts, it's static. Magnagora, Glomdoring, Celest, Gaudiguch, and Hallifax want to mutate/change/convert/smash/enslave(?) everything to Taint/Wyrd/Light/Chaos/Order. The new cities aren't necessarily as firmed in their ideal business, but that's to be expected. Mag, Glom, and Celest all have concepts that you can advance. It's sort of like... Serenwilde is the good superhero, who has to wait for the supervillan to do something before it can spring into action. In the mean time, there are no galas, no grand openings to hold the giant (gold plated lead) scissors, no babies to kiss, so Serenwilde kind of twiddles its thumbs. The problem is that in Lusty, no one likes to move until they have overwhelming force, so when the "supervillans" attack, there isn't much that can be done. With more and more people being disillusioned by somewhat scripted feeling world events, there are less and less people bothering.

Personally, I feel near to no tie with the Fae. I've got the ties to nature, and to the forest, but I find it rather hard to care about the nature spirits except that they are 'nature spirits'. Generally, I get the feeling that they can defend themselves. Our alliances take care of anyone actually wanting to harm them (truly destroy them) on a passive basis, and people doing our secondary planar quest keep them from being bound in shadows. Though that's what some of the fae want to do, so that being us 'protecting' them is kind of murky. It doesn't help that Moon is indefensible, with Ladies that can be seduced against us and that aren't loyal to anything, not even Moon. As far as commune concepts go "Fae protectors" doesn't work for me, and stands to get us into a lot of annoying philosophical trouble we aren't necessarily equipped to handle.

What happened with Hoaracle, afaik, is that he dropped in and told us not to defend Magnagora at all, who was at the time our only real ally, as it was around the time of the Gaudi/Halli flip-flop. He then promptly vanished to dream and, again afaik, still is vanished. I had some choice (IC) words to say about this, but felt like I couldn't get to him any IC way. Essentially, he came in and tried to break up our alliance, from our perspective. Not happy about that.

Enyalida:

Looking at the traditional cities, it's actually best for us (ideologically) to ally with Magnagora, for the following reason: The Taint is obvious. If you are going to hold that all other nations are fundamentally flawed and that the concepts they all stand for are 'evil' in some way, why pick the creeping and insidious evil? The Light sounds like a good idea, but it's fairly easy to take it too far, to the point where you have an overbearing leadership that decides what is right and just for the people, and you've got crusades and zealotry all over and so on. No, pick the giant bombastic tentacle'd evil! Far less chance of your people being truly swayed to the other side that way. So.. I really don't get the "Should be allied with Celest" buisness. They are a worse pick over all (the people aside >_>).

The actual reason for Celest preference is simply because they are the closest to healers and protectors of nature, the seas. The view being that we use them to get rid of the other threats to nature.

Personally, I feel near to no tie with the Fae. I've got the ties to nature, and to the forest, but I find it rather hard to care about the nature spirits except that they are 'nature spirits'. Generally, I get the feeling that they can defend themselves. Our alliances take care of anyone actually wanting to harm them (truly destroy them) on a passive basis, and people doing our secondary planar quest keep them from being bound in shadows. Though that's what some of the fae want to do, so that being us 'protecting' them is kind of murky. It doesn't help that Moon is indefensible, with Ladies that can be seduced against us and that aren't loyal to anything, not even Moon. As far as commune concepts go "Fae protectors" doesn't work for me, and stands to get us into a lot of annoying philosophical trouble we aren't necessarily equipped to handle.

I don't even... how can you even say something like that?
White Hart... a fae.

Back in the day it was more a view that Glomdoring was actually enslaving fae against their will. Bringing them to the avatars was about protecting them from that, fighting glomdoring so that we would know that they were safe.

The fae are nature, back around that time I remember talks about how harming them could have long term consequences for nature (sure there's no mechanic in place, it's an rp thing).

Without those alliances protecting the fae, they'd be farmed by which ever cities weren't prevented from doing so. The only probable exceptions being, maybe, Celest and Gaudiguch for cultural reasons. We include those lines in our alliances, as would Glomdoring, to prevent this because protecting the fae is what we do.

Also the Ladies are all loyal to Moon Spirit... so I'm not sure what you are talking about there.
EDIT: Oh unless its the ladies on the moonbubble, which I think was more related to not wanting loyals on aetherbubbles especially with nexus weakenings potentially blocking our direct route to the abode.

This thread's been interesting to me as a relative newcomer. I find Serenwilde, the Hartstone, and all the cool random (to me) things scattered around the forest pretty interesting. I have gotten frustrated because I seem to have a lot of trouble finding people who are not afk, super busy with other stuff, as clueless as I am, or about to leave in two minutes who can actually tell me the story behind some of it, or where to look to find out more. (I also run into people assuming that I must just be asking a newbie question, not out of actual interest. Yes, it's great that I can make gold with the fireflies. That doesn't answer my question about what the pool is for.)

I tend to be around at odd times, so that probably doesn't help, but the only ritual/event/group thing I've seen (other than one or two vengeance games) was Lleuke's moondancer graduation rite, which I thought was really cool, and which made me wish that the Hartstone had something like it.

It turns out we do, I've just never seen it done or even heard of it until I started systematically reading all the books in the guild library. I realize we're a tiny guild, and most of the people in the guild are busy people with all that they're trying to do, and that they have limited time to play, so might not want to spend it doing rites for people.

But it also seems like that's a really small, simple, quick thing, that doesn't need to be well attended to be meaningful to the two primary participants. I feel like more of this is what would be nice. Also more interesting discussions at the Moonhart/storytime.

There was a call for people to present cultural stuff about their guild recently. I wanted to participate, but I felt like I didn't know enough about my guild to really offer anything, and I didn't have any examples to draw on for ideas, and I couldn't seem to catch anyone with time to talk to about it. So I decided to sit back, see what other people did, and maybe I'd be able to do something next time. Only, I don't think anything ever happened with it.

I'm also confused about some of the points in this thread, probably because I don't understand the historical basis and don't know the events that people are referring to.

Enyalida just said a lot about what I was thinking about cities. I'd like to reemphasize that by allying with Magnagora and Hallifax we're protecting Faethorn because the alliance prevents them from capturing fae for their nefarious plots. To Pryderi ic this is a perfectly legitimate reason, and all that he really needs to justify it. For me ooc, I don't really understand how allying with Mag compromises Serenwilde's identity any more than allying with any other organization, or any more than Glomdoring allying with any other nation.

As to the Fae, I've been operating under the assumption that we're trying to protect the fae even against their wishes in some cases because Mother Night is insiduous and has them fooled, not to mention that there may be some fundamental corruption in Maeve that's affecting all the Fae. After all, once the fae are reasoned with, they accept that Mother Moon is the better choice. I've been going with this, because it seems to be what the city help file on fae implies, and I didn't know there was anything out there to contradict it.

Serenwilde seems to have a unifying theme with the whole circularity and sanctity of nature thing, at least, that's my impression, I admit that I don't know every guild, but it seems like most of them share some sort of variation on that theme. Which, from what I understand, is about as much as any other organization has in terms of unifying the guilds. I don't really understand why Light, Taint, Wyrd, Order/Harmony, and Chaos are considered more unifying, rallying themes than Nature. They don't necessarily have to be, and in other games certainly organizations trying to rally behind those concepts or equivalents have faltered.

Does it matter what Ackleberry will do? I don't know what the Fae shenanigans in the past were, but as far as Serenwilde is concerned who knows when, or if, Ackleberry will ever return; I don't see that it in any way concerns the players of Serenwilde how to distignuish their organization from a nonexistent organization.

Given the original topic of the thread, I thought I might throw some thoughts out there as a non-jaded, relatively clueless but well meaning member of the commune. I apologize if I've astounded or offended anyone with my ignorance, obliviousness, or stupidity.

EDIT: This is from an OOC point of view. I'm sure there are those rabid Gloms out there who'd claw my head off for even suggesting Glomdoring was Tainted, or that there was any connection to Gloriana.


How dare you call me 'rabid.'

Pryderi:

This thread's been interesting to me as a relative newcomer. I find Serenwilde, the Hartstone, and all the cool random (to me) things scattered around the forest pretty interesting. I have gotten frustrated because I seem to have a lot of trouble finding people who are not afk, super busy with other stuff, as clueless as I am, or about to leave in two minutes who can actually tell me the story behind some of it, or where to look to find out more. (I also run into people assuming that I must just be asking a newbie question, not out of actual interest. Yes, it's great that I can make gold with the fireflies. That doesn't answer my question about what the pool is for.)

I tend to be around at odd times, so that probably doesn't help, but the only ritual/event/group thing I've seen (other than one or two vengeance games) was Lleuke's moondancer graduation rite, which I thought was really cool, and which made me wish that the Hartstone had something like it.

It turns out we do, I've just never seen it done or even heard of it until I started systematically reading all the books in the guild library. I realize we're a tiny guild, and most of the people in the guild are busy people with all that they're trying to do, and that they have limited time to play, so might not want to spend it doing rites for people.

I'm honestly not sure if I've ever seen the hartstone perform their own rituals but if you see Saran around just ask. He might babble or he might just point you in a direction for you to learn on your own, but hopefully I'll pick the right response

I'm also confused about some of the points in this thread, probably because I don't understand the historical basis and don't know the events that people are referring to.

If you do have some time, the events board is worth reading through just as much as the histories that you can get through the in-game library system/on the website. But some of the references here are to player based occurrences. For example, Serenwilde was allied with Celest for the longest time and then they went to war. They might have allied again temporarily but I don't honestly remember it happening, I think the only reason Saran isn't an enemy to celest is because they were allies with Hallifax at one point. So the relationship between Celest and Serenwilde has been going for... potentially five real years now.

Enyalida just said a lot about what I was thinking about cities. I'd like to reemphasize that by allying with Magnagora and Hallifax we're protecting Faethorn because the alliance prevents them from capturing fae for their nefarious plots. To Pryderi ic this is a perfectly legitimate reason, and all that he really needs to justify it. For me ooc, I don't really understand how allying with Mag compromises Serenwilde's identity any more than allying with any other organization, or any more than Glomdoring allying with any other nation.

This is why Serenwilde allys with other organisations, it is unfortunate but the only way to survive. Magnagora just tends to represent things that are a bit more antithetical to Serenwilde. Hallifax would be considered a monstrosity by Serenwilde standards too. But I'll never tell.

As to the Fae, I've been operating under the assumption that we're trying to protect the fae even against their wishes in some cases because Mother Night is insiduous and has them fooled, not to mention that there may be some fundamental corruption in Maeve that's affecting all the Fae. After all, once the fae are reasoned with, they accept that Mother Moon is the better choice. I've been going with this, because it seems to be what the city help file on fae implies, and I didn't know there was anything out there to contradict it.

Er... not really sorry. The fae have an obligation to go to Night, the Tah'Vrai. Taking them to Moon is effectively like convincing a small child to do something they believe is utterly wrong. It also goes against their freedoms, which given that serenwilde doesn't have laws but listing of the protected freedoms of its members is something that was, at least previously, viewed as very wrong.

Serenwilde seems to have a unifying theme with the whole circularity and sanctity of nature thing, at least, that's my impression, I admit that I don't know every guild, but it seems like most of them share some sort of variation on that theme. Which, from what I understand, is about as much as any other organization has in terms of unifying the guilds. I don't really understand why Light, Taint, Wyrd, Order/Harmony, and Chaos are considered more unifying, rallying themes than Nature. They don't necessarily have to be, and in other games certainly organizations trying to rally behind those concepts or equivalents have faltered.

Does it matter what Ackleberry will do? I don't know what the Fae shenanigans in the past were, but as far as Serenwilde is concerned who knows when, or if, Ackleberry will ever return; I don't see that it in any way concerns the players of Serenwilde how to distignuish their organization from a nonexistent organization.

The Light is, effectively, a religion. The taint is similar though it is also more for the people who want to play the "evil person". The collective is a bit more deep than the labels of order and harmony, there is the outer shell but you dig deeper and you see truths behind the mask. Chaos is probably similar.

The Wyrd was brought about because in Glomdorings initial release, they were tainted. Specifically tainted, but their rp from memory was that they did not see themselves as such, they were simply nature improved. Over time there were issues that culminated in the creation the Wyrd(from an ooc perspective) this served as a point to define their rp. The wyrd is a power, a force, something they can draw from.

The fae shenanigans being a reference to this time where Glomdoring moved from being enslavers of the fae who Serenwilde opposed as their protectors, to being equals in this respect. Then things like Maeve yelling at Serenwilde for fighting in faethorn among other things.

But what we're looking at is that these are all defined concepts that the orgs get to call their own. Serenwilde has nature, they can't really do anything with natural environments other than forests so that already starts to limit them. Then the concerns with Jojoberry aren't really that major, but if Estarra envisions certain concepts as being heavily related to Ackleberry or Jojobo there is a possibility of whatever is developed being dismissed and us being told that we were wrong which is just an annoyance.

Pryderi:

The alliance with Magnagora, in particular, has a significant "omg what" factor to it because there has been a lot of history with Nil doing Taint-y shenanigans with Faethorn. Gorgulu specifically is able to consume both Moon and Night Avatars, making him more powerful through the consumed essence of the fae. The same holds true for New Celest, actually - the first war between Serenwilde and New Celest was because the latter slaughtered fae under the belief that it would weaken Nil. Then there's the whole hai'Gloh Zemordia / Xion Initiative debacle, which basically pitted Serenwilde-Glomdoring against Magnagora-Celest (Gaudiguch and Hallifax weren't out yet). It was basically a Cosmic/Elemental vs Ethereal conflict, and obviously provided each of the four organizations with enough bitterness to last years (we're still at it, currently).

'Nature' as a unifying concept is made void by the fact that Maeve is, in fact, the manifestation of the union of all the fae spirits - and thus, all of nature. This includes the Wyrden fae, as well as the fae of questionable Soulless origin (Manteekan's banshees, etc.).

Ackleberry is a factor because each organization needs something special and unique to orbit around. See Imperian's Celidon/Khandava issue: both were pure, magical forests, created separate as to preempt any Concoctions monopoly, but ultimately it failed and so one of them (Khandava) was turned demonic. Point is, an organization needs something to set it apart, and Ackleberry, if/when it comes out, can further degrade Serenwilde's identity by being another pure forest.

As Saran said, the events news posts are an excellent way to find out about these things. I'm sure some of the people here have the more interesting ones bookmarked:

• New Celest killing fae; first Seren-Celest war (Events #5)
  
• Gorgulu eating the Avatars; first modern Taint-the-Fae event (Events #10-12)
  
• Celenwilde vs Magnadoring; particularly the colorful times when Prime Magnagora was occupied and a Celest shrine raised, and when Celestia was occupied and a Mag shrine raised.
  
• Muud's discovery, kidnap and binding of Raziela (Events #115-116)
  
• hai'Gloh Zemordia / Xion Initiative; first City-Commune Wars (Events # 149, 156-157)
  
• Eight Rings of the Aether Kings
  

There are more, of course, but start with these and work your way upwards and outwards.

I'm also a bit confused on how Mag would make the best city ally for Serenwilde, given that Mag has done more harm to it over ingame events and past history.

Saran:


I don't even... how can you even say something like that?
White Hart... a fae.

I'm female.... therefore I should intrinsically never attack a woman.
My character elfen.... therefore I must identify with the plight of all elfen.
There isn't much logic in statements like that. White Hart isn't something that needs our jealous guarding or vigilant protection at all times, Hart and Moon are said to watch over us, not the other way around. That's also not to say that Hart and the fae are the same thing... Or even that Hart and Moon are the same thing. Hart is decidedly a 'collective soul', created by an Elder God. The fae are closer to spirits like Moon, that are latent and awakened.

If it's a choice between 'defend the fae' and 'defend other players in my nation' I'll pick the latter 100% of the time, because the fae will just come back/take care of themselves (one) and there isn't any reason that I feel any bond to them (two). They don't do much for us (mechanically, or RP, they mostly just hang around), and I get the distinct feeling that they come from nature, not the other way around. In other words, if it's between 'stop an untimely/bad forest fire' and 'save the fae', I'd always pick the first option, because fae aren't the most important factor. Not to mention that we've been baited uncountable times with "You're supposed to protect the fae, riiiight? Well, I'm in faethorn influencing with my gank squad, come and get meeee" and we have to go "meh". There are so many things that we regularly value over 'rush to defend the fae', that it's not a particularly powerful draw.

I'm telling you my genuine feeling here, which is one that I feel coming from a lot of other Serens: Why bother? It's not like anything they can do in EthSeren can actually hurt us, unless they plan to go for Avatars. It's not like anyone is going to romp through Faethorn killing all the Fae, knowing that there would be one of two forests majorly pissed at them, and that with the way alliances are right now, having only one ally (even for the stronger nations) is a bad idea. I have no idea what the deal is with MDs and the fae, just the basic backstory, Ellindel did some awesome wiccan magic and called physical form to the fae (hey, what? We created these physical forms for them?) to heal them, and thus we have a bond with them. Various other IC books refer to the fae as a sort of potential, a great source of power, one that we coincidentally tap into a lot with the Moonhart. Of course, we've got morals and aren't drilling theiroil - I mean power, without their consent, more or less.


@Pryderi What does defending Nature look like? We can't straight up tear down cities (as much as we'd like to), nor can we permanently remove their influence over areas or villages. So, is it just making sure that no one floods/clouds/taints/burns areas of Nature? That's stop-gappy, and isn't proactive. We aren't trying to create something new, we're trying to maintain the status quo, which involves a lot of.... standing around. That's not to say there isn't great individual and small group RP potential, but as a national entity, it's an entirely different sort that sticks out (perhaps lags behind?) on the field of the other nations.


EDIT: Yeah well... Pretty much every nation can fairly easily come up with a long laundry list of reasons to hate every other nation, even the new ones. No one wants to stand alone though, so you have to look past a lot of that.

Oh dear. I think we're just witnessing a generation gap right here.

White Hard, Crow, and the other collective spirits are fae, because a. the animals they collectivized from are part of nature, and they are the 'sum greater than the parts' and b. it's stated that each nature commune has two Greater Fae Spirits: one awakened (Moon, Night, River) and one collective (Hart, Crow, Bear).

The other points I'm not going to bother with, because I think I'll just be more depressed to think that Serenwilde has begun to think that fae (essentially, what the commune was founded for) are a lesser theme compared to others.

Thank you for the responses, and especially the event posts. I'll be sure to take a look at those. I guess I didn't realize that Serenwilde was supposed to take the Tah'vrai seriously. (Does that mean Glomdoring has to take the duty to Moon seriously too? Or is that different. Also where was I supposed to find this out ic?)


My point about Nature is I'm really not clear on how Serenwilde is different from any other organization in that respect. Celest can't just go tear down Magnagora, flood everything tainted, and call it done. Hallifax can't actually go assimilate everyone into the Collective. Is there really something fundamental (or mechanical?) that is different for Serenwilde in the fact that they can't go nuts and chop down cities and plant trees everywhere that isn't true for other orgs?

The other points I'm not going to bother with, because I think I'll just be more depressed to think that Serenwilde has begun to think that fae (essentially, what the commune was founded for) are a lesser theme compared to others.


A lot of the old school Serens were very concentrated on the fae. Then a series of events, which I think Saran has alluded to a few times, really caused massive disillusionment and bitterness that pushed many away from caring about the fae. Nowadays I doubt many recall that event, but that "I don't care about the fae" feeling feels fairly passed down.

Blah blah blah, nobody should be allied with anyone, because at the end of the day, all of the orgs have an ultimate goal that requires bringing the other orgs down/in line with it.

Glomdoring wants to bring everyone into the glory of the Wyrd.
Magnagora wants to conquer/destroy everything because of the influence of the Taint.
Celest wants to convert the masses back to the Light so it can re-establish its Empire.
Hallifax wants to assimilate everything to serve the Collective.
Gaudiguch wants to provide a place for its citizens where they can be free and find enlightenment.
Serenwilde wants to preserve the bits of nature that still exist, particularly with its own forest.

In a perfect world, none of the organisations would want to have to make deals with anybody else. The first four I mentioned above actually want to go out and destroy/absorb all of the others. In fact, I think the only alliance that can come from common goals is a Gaudiguch/Serenwilde alliance, because their aims aren't so much to destroy as to try to get others to leave them alone.

This is not how the game works, however. The game revolves around alliances. If you don't make an alliance with somebody, you are basically crippling yourself.

rika:

Blah blah blah, nobody should be allied with anyone, because at the end of the day, all of the orgs have an ultimate goal that requires bringing the other orgs down/in line with it.

Glomdoring wants to bring everyone into the glory of the Wyrd.
Magnagora wants to conquer/destroy everything because of the influence of the Taint.
Celest wants to convert the masses back to the Light so it can re-establish its Empire.
Hallifax wants to assimilate everything to serve the Collective.
Gaudiguch wants to provide a place for its citizens where they can be free and find enlightenment.
Serenwilde wants to preserve the bits of nature that still exist, particularly with its own forest.

In a perfect world, none of the organisations would want to have to make deals with anybody else. The first four I mentioned above actually want to go out and destroy/absorb all of the others. In fact, I think the only alliance that can come from common goals is a Gaudiguch/Serenwilde alliance, because their aims aren't so much to destroy as to try to get others to leave them alone.

This is not how the game works, however. The game revolves around alliances. If you don't make an alliance with somebody, you are basically crippling yourself.

^

We're allied with Celest, but we don't really like it. There's all sorts of squabbles. We just know that without Celest on our side, we'll get throttled and that's no fun

Pryderi:

Thank you for the responses, and especially the event posts. I'll be sure to take a look at those. I guess I didn't realize that Serenwilde was supposed to take the Tah'vrai seriously. (Does that mean Glomdoring has to take the duty to Moon seriously too? Or is that different. Also where was I supposed to find this out ic?)


My point about Nature is I'm really not clear on how Serenwilde is different from any other organization in that respect. Celest can't just go tear down Magnagora, flood everything tainted, and call it done. Hallifax can't actually go assimilate everyone into the Collective. Is there really something fundamental (or mechanical?) that is different for Serenwilde in the fact that they can't go nuts and chop down cities and plant trees everywhere that isn't true for other orgs?

On an OOC level, the tah'Vrai is important; Maeve has stated that Fae must serve in both Forests in order to keep Nature healthy. It is their Duty, and they serve tah'Vrai in the Serenwilde just as they do in the Glomdoring. They are just more somber about serving in the Dark Forest (as they should be!)

Now, as to how that gets interpreted IC, there are all kinds of ways to spin it. Yours is one!

For quite a while both Glomdoring and Serenwilde had an arrangement where we would only take Fae that wanted to go our way. As far as I am aware that went away when we kept catching Serens taking all the Glom & Seren fae (but leaving the Faethorn ones), because they were trying to help the 'misguided' ones; since then, both sides just tend to take every fae they find regardless of their wishes.

Hey now, we caught plenty of Gloms taking them all too. :P