The Seren/Mag alliance is difficult to justify, but you can do it without resorting to "well, at least they admit they're evil taint nazis tainted and tyrannical".

If I had to do it, I would point out that true and pure nature is governed by cycles. Spring in to summer, to fall, and winter. Plants grow, thrive, and hibernate. The Moon waxes and wanes. These cycles constantly move at their own rhythms, and their intersections can be meaningful, or perhaps not.

Celest clings to the permanence of their faded empire, and ideas that died as the world changed. Glomdoring has forgotten the cycles in favor of their fanatical devotion to the dangerously flawed Wyrd, or worse, corrupted them in an attempt to "improve" things that are beyond such concepts (penumbra).

For all its faults, Magnagora has a crude place in such cycles- indeed, life, death, and life springing from death are important aspects of nature. Magnagora takes this one aspect, and has built a society around it. Even the ouroboros they favor is, at its core, an appreciation of a governing cycle. Unlike Celest, they have risen from the ashes of a dead empire, and moved forward. That their acceptance of death comes with an appreciation of, if not desire for, un-natural undeath is lamentable, but for city-dwellers severed from a bond with nature, not suprising.

Rainydays:

For all its faults, Magnagora has a crude place in such cycles- indeed, life, death, and life springing from death are important aspects of nature. Magnagora takes this one aspect, and has built a society around it. Even the ouroboros they favor is, at its core, an appreciation of a governing cycle. Unlike Celest, they have risen from the ashes of a dead empire, and moved forward. That their acceptance of death comes with an appreciation of, if not desire for, un-natural undeath is lamentable, but for city-dwellers severed from a bond with nature, not suprising.

Ha! That's some commendable propaganda, clearly you need to get back to Serenwilde! The reason that it sits oddly with me is because in the past Serenwilde has taken such pains to differentiate spirits, ghosts, and actual undead, the latter of which has been anathema. It might be interesting to see that line blurred a bit more to more permit this line of thinking. Perhaps if undead could be regarded more neutrally, the focus of displeasure could be shifted more specifically onto dark spirits?

I had a huge post here, but the page mysteriously reset.

It's not about alliances.

Good points so far:
-Other orgs have a 'we are changing the basin by X' mantra that they get behind. Seren's (we're foresting the Basin) has been corrupted by Glomdoring enough that it doesn't feel 'unique', and there's a lot of infighting due to a lack of a common, overriding 'cause'. (Seren needs a new mantra)

-Active divine that are established and respected as representing the Organization by the players can play a major factor in raising up an organization.

-Losers-lose-more (winners-keep-winning cycle, reworded) cycle. Leaders leave, leaders that are left get burnt out, leave (or stop playing as much/at all), harder to train new leaders; leaders that are left have more to do; leaders get burnt out; repeat.

I want to touch on this idea of player leadership, because I think it's hard to understand unless you've been a leader in both a winning and losing org.

Winning orgs have more than one capable leader. One person is not doing it all. There's usually a Divine or two, five (we'll say one doesn't do anything, so four) Guildmasters, and a host of other guild leaders, as well as some influential Priests/Avatars, just to name a few. If the priests and the Divine keep morale up (running small events, reminding people of their purpose), then the combat leaders don't have to. If the guild administrators and champions run the internals of a guild, the guildmaster is free to deal with Commune business. Warlords don't have to deal with apathetic, bored people or mundane paperwork, and so they can better lead defenses and attacks.

Now, let's pull any one of these folks out. Pull the Divine or their Priests. Suddenly, the guildmasters and combat leaders are expected to 'lead' the roleplaying of the Commune. But this isn't what they're good at, particularly, and it's not what they like to do. It's not why they play Lusternia. So they tire quickly. If a war leader leaves, then somebody else has to step up, taking them from their previous job, and the whole org has to cover for both the replacement and that person's replacement while they both get up to speed on their new duties.

This makes being a Divine less fun (since your players are stressed and demoralized, and miss the 'good old days'), so the divine spends less time online or leaves entirely. The 'Good old days' are gone, as are the leaders that spread the jobs. Left is, say, one combat leader (See: Xiel/Old Serenwilde or Xenthos/Old Glomdoring), one or two capable administrators (See: Lendren), one or two capable Event Generators, who don't log in very often (See: Maylea). Suddenly, Lendren's responsible for most of Serenwilde's culture, and a guild. Xiel's running the Commune both in administrative and war tasks, all the time. Maylea's the only god left and has to try and inspire a populace in which any given three of four Order-Aligned members follow a different God.

All of these people (Heck, all of the Leaders from the 'Good Old Days') are gone. In their places stand Mirami (who's not very good at being Xiel or Lendren), Everiine (who's not exactly the toughest, strongest fighter, and certainly not on par with Shuyin), Lehki (who's a capable leader in defenses, but gets burnt out quickly getting everybody to follow up/listen/shut up-- a job that an active Divine can help with with a simple 'CT Serenwilde, your Forest and Avatars are under attack. She needs your help!', and then truefavouring everybody that helps afterwards, a la Lisaera as Seren was crumbling), and Hoaracle (Who's new, and lacks a prominent Avatar a la Gregori/Sarrasri/Nejii to provide already-established legitimacy through a respected elder). Not taking into account the myriad other folks who play a part in doing all the little things, this is not a recipe for success. Mirami can cover for Lendren or Xiel (GA or Warlord), but not both. Lehki can cover for Gregori or Sarrasri (full-time Warlord or Avatar, for the purpses of this example), but not both. Hoaracle can cover for Lisaera or Maylea (mostly-Patron god or Mostly-RP god), but not both.

If you lack any element in the puzzle, and the whole thing starts to fall apart. You need the whole puzzle to keep the success for any length of time. When you're only missing one or two pieces, it's pretty easy to put back together; but lose, say, half the pieces, and it's no longer a quick fix. It's really like starting over.

(One of the big reasons Shuyin moving makes orgs suddenly 'work' is not, I suspect, that Shuyin is there, but that the support system described above follows him there. See: lots of combatants/established leaders joining Gaudi after he moved there-- especially a lot of the administrative stuff that Xiel and others put into place).

I think I speak for all of Serenwilde's Ex-Leaders when I say that there's no 'easy fix' and that no one person can do it alone. Many have tried, and half of the challenge is convincing new leaders to reserve at least some of their energy so we can get enough good, exited leaders at once to turn things around.

In summary:
-Seren needs a new (or even just a reclarified) purpose/mantra that the leaders and the people can get behind.
-Seren needs an Active Divine or two who can split the job of being patron and creating mini-events that keep morale up and players un-bored.
-In addition to the Divine, Seren needs to get enough people interested enough to take some level of leadership/responsibility, so it's not five or six people trying to do all of the guildmaster/Circle/Guild Admin/Minister jobs. This may necessitate allowing more radical changes to how things are done to get people interested (choosing a young, inexperienced minister of Trade/Librarian/Minister of Power/etc. We have enough exess gold/power to cover a lifetime of poor decision-making; what is needed is not fiscal responsibility but creative ideas and energy).
-Additionally, I think a big part of the problem (As evidenced by Rika, Enyalida, Everiine, and Rivius above) is making it seem 'worth it' for people who do put on events. I don't really know how to do this, since I tried to do it with a ton of gold being offered and even 500,000 gold didn't really encourage people to do anything.

One other danger to beware is when leaders with different focuses and abilities cannot respect one another for what they do or perform, or when this becomes a player issue and not simply a character issue. This also tends to accelerate burn-out.

Xenthos:

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!)

I don't understand this OOC or IC. As far as I know, Gloriana was a perfectly normal forest, same as Serenwilde and Ackleberry. Having a tah'vrai system where the fae have to serve in all of them doesn't seem to have much of a point in that system, but whatever. Currently, Glomdoring is tainted/wyrded/whatever, so there's at least a difference between them, but why is it all of a sudden important? There's a reason a lot of people completely ignore Maeve and everything she says, because it's quite clearly a case of shoehorning new crap into a system with a ton of retconning, and it barely makes any sense even from an IC standpoint.

Sylphas:


I don't understand this OOC or IC. As far as I know, Gloriana was a perfectly normal forest, same as Serenwilde and Ackleberry. Having a tah'vrai system where the fae have to serve in all of them doesn't seem to have much of a point in that system, but whatever. Currently, Glomdoring is tainted/wyrded/whatever, so there's at least a difference between them, but why is it all of a sudden important? There's a reason a lot of people completely ignore Maeve and everything she says, because it's quite clearly a case of shoehorning new crap into a system with a ton of retconning, and it barely makes any sense even from an IC standpoint.

Well, right. You hit the nail on the head. A lot of other people have been commenting about how these changes have served to bring Glomdoring into focus with the nature commune theme, rather than forcing Glomdoring to remain the step-child no one wanted. With Maeve suddenly demanding that the forests respect one another, Glomdoring is now regarded as an equal opportunity player in the management of the fae. The fact that neither commune actually respects the different voices of the fae is an IC "issue" that we just didn't bother to straighten out because there's no mechanical repercussion. Morally, Serenwilde and Glomdoring are both manipulative and tyrannical and fae greedy.

The tah'vrai has sort of evolved with the Night mythos because we (Shadowdancers) recognize the tah'vrai as being Night's "specialty." It's the binding process and the servitude to the dark side of the force that makes the tah'vrai perfect for Glomdoring, but we have to remember that in the fae language, tah'vrai literally means "service" or "to serve."

The fae can still (and do still) serve the Moon, and presumably, they'll serve the River en masse, too.

Mirami, you hit it pretty well on the head. But oh Lord, if Everiine is supposed to be the tough fighter leader, no wonder we're in a world of hurt...

I'd respect the tah'vrai more if Shadowdancer fae summoning didn't still involve enslaving them. Just changing the messages would be a nice start. If they're there to serve you, they should come willingly. It's not something Sylphas knows IC outside of perhaps rumor, but if you're going to change things so that Glomdoring is a legit commune in the eyes of nature, you have to do it right.

I'd be Glom in a second if they'd done something like the Seelie and Unseelie court friction, but as it is now you're the bad guys, not just the dark ones.

I don't feel the admin are incredibly active within Glomdoring and I think we're pretty ok off. They kind of do their own thing, I don't see very much 'hands on' involvement from them except for a few different instances.

This is mostly in regards to people complaining about a 'lack of divine' in Serenwilde.

I really hate to see this thread turn into another dissection of Glomdoring politics/beliefs or how the rest of the world perceives them (because I mean, just search "Glomdoring culture" or "Glomdoring taint" and you'll find a trove of the stuff we can start throwing at each other), so I'll do what I can to throw this little tangent back into focus for the sake of the original message--

This sort of back and forth is very natural for Glomdoring and Serenwilde, and in my opinion, when this sort of thing happens in game--the stuff players have done to make the mechanical changes interesting--is what I think back on fondly whenever the Glom/Seren dichotomy comes up.

For instance, Leiliadhe and I held an in-game ritual that changed the descriptions of the bound fae, much to the chagrin of Serenwilde, because while the summoning messages still show the fae screaming (and why does this screaming mean that there's something wrong with it? Night's just not a gentle lady, and neither are Her shadows!), the fae are perfectly content in their somber servitude, shadow halos and all.

For this mini-event, the divine interaction was minimal--Leiliadhe wrote the descriptions and then had me conduct the ritual. The God Who helped made the behind-the-scenes switcheroo when I said "Ok, the ritual's over," and the fae as we know them were changed.

Sidd's right in saying that our God activity isn't always in our faces. A lot of the time, Glomdoring invents its own fun, courtesy of the players who help keep the mythos vague and ambiguous, a la Alacardael's post.

Some examples of other interesting, player-initiated events/plotlines (without administrative help this time) that include both communes:

• The joint meetings the Moondancers and Shadowdancers have had to discuss the future of Faethorn.
  
• The heated controversy over killing Xiran (and other non-coms) in Faethorn.
  
• The flurry of decidedly creepy letters (I sent them, by the way) to could-have-been converts.
  

And so on.

I will say that the Serenguard have a new ritual all designed and paid for, and we keep hearing that it's just about ready to be implemented, but nothing comes of it. Every few months I ask about it, and get told the same thing.

One thing that I was thinking of during work today is how can Serenwilde actually claim to be the X of nature any more.

The Giving Tree
The Hai'gloh Zemordia
The saving of the Tree of Trees by the commune bards and druids
and probably more

It seems that the most prominent examples of nature being endangered require Serenwilde AND Glomdoring to work together to protect it.
So the question becomes what would have happened if Serenwilde was successful in wiping Glomdoring out when these situations arose?
If we destroy the Ravenwood are we irreparably damaging the Tree of Trees?
Would we need to wipe out everything in the commune but never truly destroy the wyrd because it now must exist to ensure nature survives?
If so, why should we fight them rather than finding a way to become bffs forever?

We have our rp, and we can ignore that mechanics do not always benefit us for maintaining that, indeed it is generally better that way. (i.e protecting the fae was an rp thing, it never provided an actual benefit from memory because the ethereal critters did not exist back then, but we still did it) But if we are the pure nature commune, then we need to be able to stand on our own when it comes to nature things rather than always having to have Glomdoring help too. (sorry guys sharing is cool and all but all play dates must come to an end)

The Giving Tree would be a lot cooler if it wasn't a cover for a monthly promotion.

That too

The more I consider this thread, the more I begin to feel that Seren needs an RP makeover.

The problem for Seren is, the RP of "nature" has developed such that Glomdoring can largely claim Serenwilde's portfolio, and Serenwilde doesn't really have much of anything to fall back on. Even being anti-wyrd flies in the face of they wyrd being an essential part of the balance of anything generally natural.

Seren needs a focus that lets them conflict with Glomdoring without ultimately looking like hypocritical morons every time they say "don't wyrd that" regarding some world event. From an OOC standpoint, that's a horribly frustrating baseline RP to have. It wouldn't be much fun for Celest if, whenever there was a relevent event, for the good of the world it had to be tainted in part. Doing that sort of thing can really undermine a pillar an org stands on.

Seren can't really afford to be the "good" forest. Because Glomdoring can take the essential elements of that when it has a mind to, and be the "good" forest. To my mind, Serenwilde should be given more tools/incentives/events to play up its harsher aspects. Some of it is there already, but it gets buried under the baggage of being the aesthetically "good" org. Rather than getting stuck in the (speaking strictly of RP narratives vis a vis event outcomes) doomed stance of being the "anti-wyrd" forest (and it is doomed, since every over-arcing nature centric thing is either neutral towards, or requires the wyrd), and getting mired in an insustainable RP position, Seren needs to find a new way to define itself.

Serenwilde is already the winter to Glomdoring's summer in some ways, but it would be hard to base too much upon that, especially with Etherwilde being about all the seasons, and Night having its own claim to "coldness". Sometimes I think, what would Serenwilde have been like if it had been the forest that got Kethuru'd? I imagine, in contrast to Glomdoring, Serenwilde would have much less of the "teeming with insects/smaller viscious life forms" aspect, and more of a corrupted megafauna theme, with very large, very viscious animals, stalking through an often frozen forest, under the unpredictably capricious gaze of a malicious moon. There could be seemingly insane cults of the moon phases, and more of the whole "stag tears your intestines out" bit.

Obviously, that's a bit (waaay) further than is remotely reasonable, but stuff like that can provide some inspiration for things Serenwilde could do/be.

Sylphas:

I'd respect the tah'vrai more if Shadowdancer fae summoning didn't still involve enslaving them. Just changing the messages would be a nice start. If they're there to serve you, they should come willingly. It's not something Sylphas knows IC outside of perhaps rumor, but if you're going to change things so that Glomdoring is a legit commune in the eyes of nature, you have to do it right.

I'd be Glom in a second if they'd done something like the Seelie and Unseelie court friction, but as it is now you're the bad guys, not just the dark ones.

Er... what? The Tah'vrai is the fae's inherent duty to serve Mother Night. They are certainly not being enslaved - they are eager to do their duty, unlike the fae which serve Serenwilde who have to be drugged and coerced. If the fae are afraid of anything, it's of not serving Mother Night well -enough-. It's like Ethereal Glomdoring is a fancy party, and they are worried their little fae clothes might be shabby. But really, they have nothing to worry about because Mother Night embraces all of her subjects, and does not turn away those who wish to serve her.

Glom is already full of good guys. All we want is to honor and emulate M. Night and Crow, and the best way to do this is to spread the Wyrd across the Basin, endarkening everyone as to their teachings and how generally awesome it is to be a Glomdorito. Seriously, maybe we are a bit prim, but inside of manses it's all hugs and family picnics, no sarcasm. All we want is to be pretty and happy, in a subdued and aloof way. We may do it with a bit of goth flare, but that hardly constitutes being a bad guy! We strive for great justice in all doings - let the record show that our event history for the past several rl years is almost unfailingly on the good-guy side. Who saved the world from the evil toys instead of aiding the toymakers wife? That's right it was us. You're welcome. When we fight hard, it is not out of bitterness or hatred but only to protect our fellow commune-members from the kinds of cruelty that our elders suffered in the past. All achievements that we earn are done for the same reason - to give our communemates something we can all be proud of together. There is no court friction in Glomdoring that extends beyond a couple of days because the only fights we ever really have involve who loves Glomdoring the most and who is serving it the best, and knowing this, it is hard to really carry on in discord. Put that in your tree and hug it you evil, evil Seren.

Whether or not the Admin's ideas about the fae and the two communes make any sense is really peripheral to the concern about Serenwilde in need of revitalization in terms of RP. Akui is mostly right in the sense that it's time for Serenwilde to find something new to sit on instead of the rotted corpse of the dead horse they've been beating for the past 8 years of Lusternia's existence.

As some have pointed out, any nudge in this pillar, from the admin or from the player leaders, is gonna end up with fireworks and serenwilders fighting the change. There's no way to change that, so even that is irrelevant to this discussion about how to make Serenwilde fun to play in again. Whatever choice you make you'll have discontents, so just bulldoze your way through everything. The only exception is that the admin alone can't be discontented with your plan, whatever it is. Make sure you run your idea by them until they agree it is something they support or will at least tolerate until the implementation of the next stage of their Vision. Once you have an okay in that area, all that remains is to push it through, and use the ousting button liberally to enforce it until it becomes the new Serenwilde vision. With a new role, you will hopefully attract those who wish to play that role, and fill up the org with people willing to enforce the role. Once you have a self-sustaining system in place, you no longer need to babysit every single member of the org until they fit in. (The "you" in this paragraph is directed to current Seren leaders, of course.)

The underlying rationale behind this is focus. Without a hardline stance, polarization or a focus to rely on, the org will simply recruit more and more rejects and castouts from other orgs. Every org that has a hardline stance in the game-world conflict inevitably have a threshold beyond which they would reject players who disagree with their policies. These rejects wander around like lost spirits until they find an org which has enough tolerance for them to play the game their way. This in itself is not a bad thing, except that if an org is made up of nothing but these rejects and zero focus, then it is forever doomed to have three dozen different lines of philosophy and roleplay going on at the same time, of which only one line will interest any single player. Whenever a leader gets into power and tries to institute a "fun" environment, that will only be "fun" for a select subset of the entire member base. Discontent arises, leader is toppled, cycle repeats itself. Until the org has a role that majority of the members agree with and will willingly support and enforce, it will never have a palpable "fun" atmosphere.

It isn't bad in any way that Glomdoring can be a "good" forest. Not at all.

However, in opening that door, it fairly dooms Serenwilde to narrative irrelevance. The only thing they can be that Glom can't claim is anti-wyrd. That in itself is its own problem- an org being fixated entirely on "not being the other side" is no org at all. But that aside, the progress of the game's lore has made a situation where the wyrd is an essential part of nature.

So even if Serenwilde could pull off being "anti-wyrd" as a cohesive thing to base themselves around, they are inevitably going to look like hypocritical, clueless morons every time a nature-centric event ends with "the wyrd and the non wyrd must be in balance, both are required for nature".

And that, from an org design standpoint, should be unacceptable. It is a no-win scenario.

Hence, Serenwilde needs treatment, different, but of a similar stripe to what Glomdoring received- they need a looking over, and a development of an actual reason to have the org. It just isn't there right now.

I mean, Celest is about as anti-Taint as you can get, but it isn't what the org is about. I could ICly talk someone's ear off about the virtues of the Light, without bringing up the Taint at all. But if I were in Seren, there isn't anything I could say about nature, beyond the hopelessly esoteric and marginal, that someone in Glom couldn't say as well. And if I brought up the Wyrd as being bad, I would immediately be set up for failure by the very facts of the game making the Wyrd essential to nature. No win.

I feel that the Wyrd-being-essential-to-nature bit is fine. It differentiates the commune conflict from the cities. But since it is fine, Serenwilde needs a focus that isn't "we're anti-something-essential-to-nature!"

To my mind, it needs to be darker too, so that both forests can claim light/dark sides. May as well blur the lines going both ways.

What this would be? I don't know. Maybe a new force of nature could arrive that is its own concept. Something that winds up weaving itself in to nature, and thus sorting nature in to Wyrden, Seren-thing, and unaffiliated nature. Something Seren could embody and "spread". Something to raise banners and chant slogans over.

Or we could open Jojobo. That would be cool too.

Let me start this out by saying that I am very sympathetic to Serenwilde's current problems. It really sucks to feel like you have nothing to work towards, and no input from the admin on where you should be heading. Here comes the big but, though.

You need to get over it. All you 'old timers' who come here and say, "The admin keep messing things up, I'm done with even caring," you are part of the problem. You feel like Serenwilde needs a new focus? Come up with one, send a message to your Patron about it, and if there's a problem they'll let you know. You can't expect Estarra & Co. to spend time coming up with new stuff for you if you can't even be bothered to react to what they have given you. Who cares if the Giving Tree is part of a monthly promotion? I think they did an excellent job of tying it into our ongoing storylines. Instead of handing a novice a vial and saying, "Go find a nymph to give this to, you'll get free stuff," explain to them how the nature spirits have always been there to protect us from harmful outside influences*, and now that a new, very malevolent, threat has turned its eyes on us, the spirits decided it was time for a new layer of protection. This will engage them directly in your currently stated purpose, protecting nature. Yeah, sure, everyone else is helping the Tree too, but those city folk just want the free stuff, and Glomdoring has become so insidious that they've convinced everyone but you (nature spirits included) that they're as natural as Serenwilde. Just putting a little bit of thought into your everyday actions can help a lot more than you may think.

Hallifax has some similar problems re: lack of divine direction and not enough people to do everything. We're trying to solve this by working to improve one small thing at a time. We raised an Ascendant because we decided it was time to get more involved in Domoths. I think we've done pretty well in that aspect, even if we've made, and continue to make, a few mistakes. Our response in aetherflares has been a tiny bit better almost every time, and we finally managed to win one. The last flare, which we didn't do a very good job in, really highlighted for me the difference in attitude. Out of nine people logged in, four of us got on a ship and were halfway to a bubble by the time Serenwilde even said anything. And what they did say was, "There's only seven of us, that's not enough to do anything." That is completely missing the point. If only two out of those seven people are willing to help, those two people need to get on a ship and get to a bubble. Even if all you manage to do is dock just in time to not implode, set up a colossus, and sit there until the other guy wins, the point is that you did something. Even flying out there and immediately dying is better than staying home. Favour everyone who helped, and see if there's something you could try differently next time.

As for getting people involved, Mirami mentioned a big one. Give new players a chance to take on responsibility. Your established leaders are burnt out and bored, let someone else have a try. If they suggest something that's been tried before, let them do it. The game has changed, the environment has changed, the people have changed. A lot of the old resentful feelings are not applicable anymore, and they're just holding you back. Don't pass on your bitterness to the next generation.

*Each forest got three spirits, a Collective animal, an Awakened aspect of nature, and a new, created just for this purpose, Great Tree, solely for the purpose of giving the physical forest stronger anchors to ethereal, so they'd be harder for the Soulless to destroy completely.

TL;DR: Admin intervention can be nice, but it's not necessary, and has a chance to backfire.

Rainydays:

Stuff

Just the one real issue with introducing something new (OOCly) is that Serenwilde is all about keeping true to the purity of nature.

You could have five mystical bands held within the five guilds, each dedicated to a unique aspect of pure nature, that when united will summon the greatest natural force known to mortalkind to destroy the wyrd.

But what can determine whether this will be easily accepted is if it is something new that has taken up residence within "nature" or if it is something that has always been there that we just haven't known about.