As the Nine Seals are threatened, with the Seal of Beauty broken and the others weakened, an Ascension is upon us. The Soulless Kethuru threatens to break out of imprisonment and Avechna, the Avenger has called for the worthy and brave to compete in Seal Challenges to select the Nine that will stand in the Final Trial. Those Nine will then compete for the Staff of Ascension and one will rise as the True Ascendant to empower the Seals and secure Kethuru behind them.

Each Seal Challenge is unique to that Seal and tests different abilities. Each challenge has a winner, the Seal Bearer who receives the appropriate Medallion, and the other participants receive credit rewards up to the fifth place. While it is possible to stand alone in those trials, your chances will be better if you have support and prepare in advance. Also, this Ascension you will not be representing just yourself to Avechna, but your organisations too, and rewards will be bestowed upon the nations of those who place in the challenges. We are also working on additional rewards and further tweaks to the Final Trial as well, and you'll hear more about all that soon.

To prepare for the challenges, you should review the information available in HELP ASCENSION RULES, which describes each challenge and its rules. While the challenges will remain as described there, we are still making some adjustments to the rules/balance of some of them.

As an example, the point worth of some denizens for the Harmony and Death Challenge is getting re-evaluated (most notably those in Iceplains) and we'll get you a finalised list on the 22nd (tomorrow) as Harmony and Death are the first challenges. Also, for Harmony and Death you won't be able to kill denizens ahead of the challenge anymore (invulnerability will go up an hour before the challenge). Further, the Life Challenge will have the same general format but the illnesses/clues will be different to keep things fresh and fair, and we are still evaluating if there is anything new that should be allowed/disallowed in the Justice Challenge. We are reviewing your past feedback on the topic too but if there is any challenge-related balance issue you believe is worth looking into, please message me asap.

And finally, all pending reports related to combat will be implemented before the Final Trial (next 1-2 weeks most likely) and we will also be looking into some group combat-related issues. Once we are ready to move on that, we will make the list of the problems and potential solutions available for your comments.

Now onto the schedule itself! All the times listed below are in GMT, in accordance with Lusternia's time and date as seen on TIME. The events will also go up on Discord so you will be easily able to see how that converts to your timezone.

ASCENSION SCHEDULE
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July 22
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Challenge of Beauty: Submissions Open (await the announcement)

July 27
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Challenge of Harmony - 11pm GMT

July 28
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Challenge of Death - 4pm GMT

August 3
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Challenge of Nature - 11pm GMT

August 4
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Challenge of Life - 10pm GMT

August 10
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Challenge of Justice - 9pm GMT

August 11
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Challenge of Chaos - 11pm GMT
Challenge of Beauty: Submissions Close (at weave)

August 17
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Challenge of War - 9pm GMT

August 18
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Challenge of Knowledge - 4pm GMT
Challenge of Beauty: Results - 6pm GMT

August 24
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Ascension Gala - 10pm GMT

August 25
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Final Ascension - 10pm GMT

Penned by My hand on the 12th of Tzarin, in the year 683 CE.