Rocky's Revival (World of Avernum Factional RP Revival Discussion)
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Law Bringer
Member # 4153
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written Wednesday, December 26 2007 13:32
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More vahnatai notes, mostly taken from A5, which I defend as canon equal in value to that taken from A1-3. They aren't all as spoilerific as before, but are equally important if you still want to do the vahnatai: The vahnatai Resting periods are staggered based on the particular tribe, so the entire Vahnatai nation is not awake at the same time.There are way more of them in the caves than previously supposed, and A5 vahnatai speak of many, many tribes.At the time of A5, the Olgai tribe is going into Resting again.The vahnatai who awaken from Resting to find humans on their lands are generally rather annoyed. -------------------- TM: "I want BoA to grow. Evolve where the food ladder has rungs to be reached." Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice. Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 7420
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written Wednesday, December 26 2007 17:08
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I would like to create a faction in the Eastern Province of Avernum. If you would all be kind enough to leave that area for me, I should have something written up for it any time now. -------------------- You lose. Posts: 2156 | Registered: Thursday, August 24 2006 07:00 |
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Agent
Member # 4574
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written Wednesday, December 26 2007 17:18
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ET, you'd be perfect to RP the Neo-Hunters I talked about on Page 2, with my summary of the old Hunters. -------------------- "I'm happy I'm the mentally disturbed person I am." -Nioca "Yes, Iffy is a demon." -Iffy The Two Universal Truthes: "All I know is that I know nothing" -Socrates "I think, therefore I am." -René Descartes Posts: 1186 | Registered: Friday, June 18 2004 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 7420
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written Thursday, December 27 2007 06:46
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Sorry Goldenking, I already had this mostly done when I noticed your offer. The Protectorate of the Lady Location: The Eastern Province of Avernum. The Lady is based in a rebuilt Fort Avernum. Cotra, Silvar, and Fort Duvno pay her tribute and garrison her soldiers. Leadership: The money and brains behind the operation is Lady Calpurnia, and she has purchased the services of Sss-Kai, an experienced slith warrior commanding a small army of mercenaries. Races: Calpurnia herself if from the Empire. Though she has maintained a few servants from her time on the surface she is now employing Avernite mercenaries almost exclusively. The small army lead by Sss-Kai consists of mostly rugged humans with some sliths and nephil scattered throughout. Ideology: A true Imperial noble, it is Lady Calpurnia’s intention to regain her lost wealth and prestige by any means available. Since chaos has overwhelmed Avernum as well, she intends to expand her influence by offering the populace a taste of Imperial order. Taking advantage of a time of utter desperation, she will force the people of Avernum to give up their once coveted liberties in return for a respite from the anarchy that has gripped the land. Safety is a coveted resource in these times, and the Lady offers it in abundance. Those that refuse are made to see just how valuable her protection can be. Since the surface is no longer an option for her, she will not rest until her banner is flown over all of Avernum instead. Military: Since the collapse of the Kingdom of Avernum, Sss-Kai and mercenaries like him have been feeding off the population of Avernum like your usual bandits. They and the population they plunder had been barely scrapping by when Calpurnia arrived in the underworld. Though she has nearly drained all her fortunes recruiting them into her service, she hopes to convert them from a ragged band of mercenaries into a formal army once the money she is extorting from the population is coming in at a more steady rate. History: Lady Calpurnia’s family was of some prominence in Valorum before the fall of the Empire. When it crashed and burned and the noble families were hunted down, she fled to Avernum with all the gold she could carry. Lucky for her, it was enough to acquire the services of the mercenary captain Sss-Kai. Since Sss-Kai was already set up in the ruins of Fort Avernum, Calpurnia made her home there. She ordered Sss-Kai to protect and extort the nearby cities rather than pillage them, thus assuring a more consistent cash flow. Thus, she was able to take over and demand tributeof Silvar, Cotra, and Fort Duvno. -------------------- You lose. Posts: 2156 | Registered: Thursday, August 24 2006 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 32
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written Thursday, December 27 2007 09:09
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You might want to rethink that. Cotra, Silvar, and Fort Avernum have been destroyed. Fort Duvno is the only town in the Eastern Gallery that is still standing... -------------------- Lt. Sullust Quaere verum Posts: 2462 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00 |
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Agent
Member # 4574
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written Thursday, December 27 2007 09:37
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quote:Wha... when did that happen? I admit I only truely paid attention to happenings in Upper Avernum and Valorim. -------------------- "I'm happy I'm the mentally disturbed person I am." -Nioca "Yes, Iffy is a demon." -Iffy The Two Universal Truthes: "All I know is that I know nothing" -Socrates "I think, therefore I am." -René Descartes Posts: 1186 | Registered: Friday, June 18 2004 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 7420
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written Thursday, December 27 2007 16:34
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I must have missed that, too. Well, so I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say they've been resettled, right? It would be un-Avernite of them to let all that land go to waste. -------------------- You lose. Posts: 2156 | Registered: Thursday, August 24 2006 07:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Thursday, December 27 2007 22:49
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By the time I go to sleep today, should I be arsed to do so, I will have made a crude Avernum map. Once again, I'm going to warn you that it's going to be based on A1-A3. The deal with A4 and A5 isn't just that I don't know them; I didn't like Avernum a great deal and never registered E1, and was never really compelled to do the kind of exploring most of E/A3's fans did, but critically, I've always been OK with searching out a knowledge base on them. On the other hand, I hold A4 and A5 in active contempt. The basic concept for A4 was one of the most sickening things I had ever read about a game, and after hearing about the single-level map I was convinced Vogel was going to go for a hat trick by having the party fight in the name of the long-abused, plucky little Empire against an evil statist with a wheelchair and a cigarette holder. It's not even like Geneforge, where the game is simply so unappealing and the plot so trivial that I've resolved never to devote more than sixty consecutive seconds' attention to either. The later Avernums are just so damned rotten that I'm powerfully tempted to regard anyone who's played them as a worse person for it. Seriously. While I'm OK with what you're throwing out about the Vahnatai (although awakening and resting in twenty-year cycles is a little strange to me and I don't abide nonsense), I'm seriously not accepting the later Avernums as part of the canon. A lot of the personal investment I have in the 'canon' itself is admitted fanwank, and you cannot imagine how difficult it is just dealing with what JV chose to do with the remakes. It's sacrifice enough that I have to suffer additional canon-base from a series of games that took the most awesome part of my adolescence and added a Goddamn reference to Survivor to it. I'm just not prepared to address A4 or A5 with anything except contempt. [ Thursday, December 27, 2007 22:49: Message edited by: Najosz Thjsza Kjras ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Thursday, December 27 2007 23:00
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quote:Just so you know, Vahnatai Creationism is silly and so is anyone who believes in it. It only happened because not even Vahnatai Week lasting all year and involving a conlang without the vaguest color of actual canonicity (I'll admit I'm guilty on that front, but I was eleven) could get certain people hard any more. I'm looking at you here, Mr. Thompson. There's little to no support for it in the games; the closest anyone gets to support is supposing that the Vahnatai are really powerful and awesome and claim to have created cave fungus and so on, but (a) claiming to have created the glowing fungus seems to be a common bit of propaganda among politically powerful Avernite mages and (b) Rentar is by all evidence the strongest specimen the Vahnatai have ever produced and everything she's created seems to be resurrected from dead plagues - that is, her own act of 'creation' is closer in nature to Jurassic Park than the wholesale creation of sapient life. The fact that the Trogs and Giants were 'born' into direct competition says a lot about her methods. Considering how few ethnic feuds tend to be genetic, it could well be that she just had some kind of powerful revival magic for the sapient plagues, and the closest she got to creating advanced life was the Golems - something well within the purview of modern magic, and not exactly indicative of abiogenesis capabilities if that's the best the Vahnatai can do. Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 4153
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written Friday, December 28 2007 00:00
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quote:Not quite what I meant... the game simply said that the Olgai clan was beginning preparations for another Resting, which must be a rather long and drawn-out process. But I understand and respect your position, even though I would defend A5 as deserving of merit (far, far more so than A4). -------------------- TM: "I want BoA to grow. Evolve where the food ladder has rungs to be reached." Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice. Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 32
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written Friday, December 28 2007 03:21
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quote:This is reasonable. Just don't make them booming metropolises right away. It takes time to rebuild a city; however, Cotra has been rebuilt before, and I have no doubt that it would be again... -------------------- Lt. Sullust Quaere verum Posts: 2462 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Friday, December 28 2007 04:47
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quote:The position I outlined is certainly less against A5 as it is against A4. And as I said, what you say is more or less coherent with what I've described of the Vahnatai - that is, as a massive group without any coherent nationality whose relationship to humanity has been completely crystallized by a single group. 90% of what we say about 'the Vahnatai' - more than 99.9% before Vogel made it explicit outside of the decent VODT and kind of marginal ZKR (both of which I'm still more willing to accept as canon sources than A4) - was completely restricted to observation of the Olgai tribe. (The endonym is almost certainly different; c.f. Chapterhouse Dune describing the US as 'the house of Washington'.) And incidentally, it's dubious the Vahnatai speak a single language or even share a single specific identity - remember, human monospecifity was largely restricted to philosophy and theology before the early 20th century. I've always wanted to include a scene in a scenario in which a character, listing 'the races', outlines a list like 'Humans, Nephilim, Trogolodytes, Vantanasmen, Nepharim, Vahnatai, Abyssmen, Sliths, Moors, Giants, and the Minor Fae.' The modern (henceforth referring to almost exactly contemporary to the Surrender of Krizsan) relationship with Imperial race policy is probably as cold and distant as the Enlightenment's relationship with Catholic monogenesis; similarly, there are probably a lot of Vahnatai who harbor an immovable belief that they're cut from different cloth than the lazy, filthy, stupid tribe a few meters down. [ Friday, December 28, 2007 04:49: Message edited by: Najosz Thjsza Kjras ] Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
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For Carnage, Apply Within
Member # 95
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written Saturday, December 29 2007 12:01
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quote:Since the parties in the various games which Vahnatai appear can always distinguish male and female Vahnatai on sight, it stands to reason they must have some. :P -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: More fun than a kick in the shins! Posts: 567 | Registered: Friday, October 5 2001 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 4153
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written Sunday, December 30 2007 23:13
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*prods topic* -------------------- TM: "I want BoA to grow. Evolve where the food ladder has rungs to be reached." Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice. Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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...b10010b...
Member # 869
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written Monday, December 31 2007 02:10
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quote:As it happens, this was stated explicitly in A5 as well. Each clan of Vahnatai can only communicate with a few others. Some, like the Olgai clan, had magic to bypass the language barrier -- at least, in Exile 2 they did. I don't know if that's been retconned out since then. -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Monday, December 31 2007 04:45
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Thuryl, are you talking about the pools of water in Avit? Because while those fomented understanding of the Olgai tongue in outsiders, they certainly didn't help the Olgai tribe learn other languages. Alec, by my reckoning (which is rigorously evidence-based), A5 takes place about 48 years after the Olgai tribe awoke. So it isn't 20 years. And the references in the game mention that it is unusual to prepare for Resting again so quickly -- that it was a choice made in light of the whole Rentar debacle. So it isn't a cycle, either. Unexpected, perhaps, but not implausible. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central "Slartucker is going to have a cow when he hears about this," Synergy said. Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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...b10010b...
Member # 869
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written Monday, December 31 2007 07:00
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quote:Well, they were clearly created for some purpose, and I doubt it was specifically to teach the Olgai clan's language to humans. If they can magically impart understanding of their language to humans, surely they can do it to other vahnatai too. Then again, maybe not? Epiron-Bok makes a comment in A5 about how humans have much simpler minds than vahnatai, making it much easier to see their intentions (and perhaps easier to stick a language in there). Still, for the theory that the pools only work on humans to hold water, we must assume that in the short time between their first contact with humans and the A2 party's arrival in Avit, and with few or no experimental subjects to work on (it's hardly credible that the Empire would willingly offer up its citizens for the vahnatai to probe), the Olgai clan were able to develop an entirely new magical technique for imparting languages. I'll grant that this is possible, but it seems implausible. -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Monday, December 31 2007 08:04
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quote:That quote is in E2 in several places. Maybe Elohi-Bok? It's clearly established as the primary motivation behind the Resting. But in A5, Clodeca of the Olgai tribe says: "My nation of vahnatai has begun the preparations for sleep. We have been too wounded and too maddened by our contact with your peoples. We need the calm that sleep brings." -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central "Slartucker is going to have a cow when he hears about this," Synergy said. Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 32
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written Monday, December 31 2007 12:07
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As fascinating as all that is, it has nothing to do with the RP. Any idea on when those maps are going to be done, and when we are going to start it up again? -------------------- Lt. Sullust Quaere verum Posts: 2462 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 10374
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written Tuesday, January 1 2008 09:14
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Now that new year has past, will somebody create a map so we can start already? -------------------- You must show me respect becouse...never mind why but do respect me! All hail me, your...something. Don't contradict me or I'l...GUARDS! Posts: 263 | Registered: Sunday, September 9 2007 07:00 |
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For Carnage, Apply Within
Member # 95
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written Friday, January 4 2008 14:37
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Alexander Charles Kyras, will you get on with it already? :P -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: More fun than a kick in the shins! Posts: 567 | Registered: Friday, October 5 2001 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 4153
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written Friday, January 4 2008 21:11
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Alright, I will now spend part of this weekend crafting a new intro/summary post, and the maps can appear later if Alec ever gets to them. This needs to get itself moving, and I have just enough time left before classes start again to do it. :P -------------------- TM: "I want BoA to grow. Evolve where the food ladder has rungs to be reached." Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice. Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 4153
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written Monday, January 7 2008 12:27
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HEY! Here we go! IC OoC -------------------- TM: "I want BoA to grow. Evolve where the food ladder has rungs to be reached." Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice. Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Agent
Member # 4574
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written Monday, January 7 2008 13:45
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I told you that if no one else would do it, I would. Neo-Hunterian Empire, here I come. "Was it not non-humans who killed the vissionary Garzahd*? Was it not non-humans that systematically wiped out life in the Valorim Plagues? Was it not non-humans who systematically wiped out so many human lives during the Time of the Star?!? Never again, we stand now to end this cancer once and for all!!!" *I would not be in the least way surprised if the Imperial historians made Garzahd look like the rolemodel for Prazsac. And Prazsac was the one who united the humans, the Neo-Hunters glaze over her non-human civil rights grants. Same with Micah. -------------------- "I'm happy I'm the mentally disturbed person I am." -Nioca "Yes, Iffy is a demon." -Iffy The Two Universal Truthes: "All I know is that I know nothing" -Socrates "I think, therefore I am." -René Descartes Posts: 1186 | Registered: Friday, June 18 2004 07:00 |
