Random Comment Responses and Clarifications

[Rias]

I'm starting this thread for the random comments I've seen (or been shown) that I thought warranted a response, but by that point it's either way after the fact or I just want it to be in a place that's less ephemeral than chat. I'm going to try to avoid directly quoting the comments because I don't want anyone to feel personally called out; my intention is to clear things up, not to dunk on anyone. I imagine some of these were said in jest, but again, I prefer to clarify so the jests don't get taken as fact by others who don't realize they're jests. (This happens a lot more than one might think. Please take care with jokes that could easily be taken as facts or norms by those who don't know better.)

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There have been a number of situations dating all the way back to ye olden days of CLOK where sorcerers would attack or otherwise harass their own minions in some way. This seems to be most often part of an effort to practice a skill or to experiment with something. These sorcerers would often be surprised when said minion forms a grudge and is not happy about the situation, the sorcerer believing that as the familiar came from their own soul/consciousness, it should therefore be fine with the situation.

Imagine one day you wake up, stretch, rub the sleep from your eyes, and are just getting out of bed when someone looking exactly like you leaps out from the closet and stabs you in the leg with a knife. As you're writhing in pain they casually explain that they are the "real" you, and you are just a disposable clone they created to experiment on and send into dangerous situations in front of them. Similar "experiments" go on regularly as the supposedly "real" you commits various abuses upon you. Would you just shrug and say "well, guess that's my lot in life" and put up with an existence of deliberate pain, abuse, and constant anxiety over when the next horrors will be visited upon you by your other self?

TL;DR: Yes, a sorcerer's own familiar/familiar-controlled minion can get mad at them. Their consciousnesses are linked, but separate. The familiar has its own sense of individuality.

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"Me Giganti, me strong, me smash you with club now, unga bunga."

It's a fun trope to play and can work for a particular individual's circumstances (Giganti or otherwise), but just putting it out there that the Giganti as a race/culture are not unga bungas, and typically heave exasperated sighs when they are portrayed that way or one of their people who acts as such is viewed as a typical example of the Giganti people or culture.

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"Yarrrr mateys, I be a Parren and it do be a fine day for piratin', yarrr."

Hollywood Pirate is another fun trope to play (I've done it myself a time or two), but I want to clarify that Pirate Speak is not the national Parren dialect and I imagine most Parrens who speak in such a way are doing so deliberately to play to the trope or identify themselves in such a way, or were raised by people doing such. Most Parrens aren't "pirates", though they do tend to be exceptionally free-spirited people who live in an island nation where seafaring is a big part of the culture, so there is a natural tendency for them to produce more piratey types than average. That said, the nations with the greatest tendency for producing terrors of the seas would be Tyr-Gwyrd (Faewyr homeland) and Sirak Drauth (Giganti homeland).

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I've said on multiple occasions that Mistral Lake is the "fancy" town, but I should clarify: Mistral Lake *wants* to be the fancy town, and it will be to the extent it is able, but it is still limited by the fact it's a town in a quarantined post-apocalyptic death zone region of the world. They can't be as fancy as the Seven Cities of Khaldea just because they really want to be. They are extremely limited in their availability of resources, trade, and skilled labor compared to anywhere outside the Quarantine, and characters (NPC and PC alike) having a high skill level in a crafting skill doesn't mean they have the specialized knowledge to effectively create super fancy things out of nowhere.

I am perhaps notorious for my wariness of what some friends and I have termed "Luxury Creep." I know some people want to be in that ultra fancy luxury pinnacle of posh society, but that's not what the Lost Lands is like by any stretch of the word. Not even in Mistral Lake and the Dominion. The Dominion and Mistral would like to *become* that, but that's not realistic at the moment. Again, the resources and the specialized labor are just not there. Lost Landers are made up primarily of rugged apocalypse survivors and the descendants thereof. The vast majority of people coming into the Lost Lands from outside the Quarantine are exiles and criminals, not skilled artisans.

So yes, I want Mistral to be the fancy-er town when compared to Shadgard or other outposts, but it is still by no means a posh lap of luxury or pinnacle decadence. If you look around at the descriptions, many of the areas talk about how cramped everything is within the limited platform space. A big part of the game setting's aesthetic is deliberately meant to be that of rugged survival in a horrible world, and while some occasional examples of nicer things may stand out as the people of the Lost Lands try and set aside some effort for nice things in order to hold on to things like culture and art and such (the Mistral arts hall and Shadgard's basic steam/gas technology come to mind), those should be considered exceptional cases and not expected to become more normalized in the forseeable game's future. Mistral has a leg up in this, as its location (the lake platform) was originally an isolated section of the Vatnfjall populace set aside for the city's noble elite. The upper bluffs on the northwest side of town are still quite nice, the structures having mostly survived the plague and aftermath. The arts hall wasn't built from scratch, it was already there - it just needed to be fixed up. Unfortunately, most of the rest of Mistral Lake's previous "fancy" homes and venues were long ago salvaged for more practical purposes by the early Plague survivors.

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There continue to be comments claiming sorcerers aren't allowed in Shadgard, so I'll take this opportunity to clarify once again: Sorcerers are allowed in Shadgard, they're just not allowed to practice sorcery within the town walls. Mistral Lake has a similar law but with an exception for those who have acquired a license to do so, it's just that the system for sorcery licenses isn't coded in yet. Even the Dominion agrees that people shouldn't be free to just throw nether around willy-nilly in a crowded population center. That stuff is extremely dangerous.

[Dennis]

Does the Dominion have similar permits available for Arcana? With recent changes to performing arcana in areas where there is a crowd, I've always been wondering if it was a "all arcana is always potentially dangerous to the people around it" or if it's something one could get exceptions for.

[Maina]

On a related note to "sorcery cannot be practiced in-town," does simply having a Shadow Familiar count?

I would imagine the average citizen would be fairly spooked by the sight of one, but if I forget to put my Familiar away before entering New Emberlight or the faire or Mistral Lake without a permit, am I liable to get banned or otherwise face official in-game legal action from these places?

[Rias]

Does the Dominion have similar permits available for Arcana? With recent changes to performing arcana in areas where there is a crowd, I've always been wondering if it was a "all arcana is always potentially dangerous to the people around it" or if it's something one could get exceptions for.

They definitely should! Arcana can have all sorts of effects that are completely unapparent to your average citizen or even Dominion official just by looking at the diagram being drawn. Having some kind of badge to wear as a trusted arcane practitioner would be neat.

On a related note to "sorcery cannot be practiced in-town," does simply having a Shadow Familiar count? I would imagine the average citizen would be fairly spooked by the sight of one, but if I forget to put my Familiar away before entering New Emberlight or the faire or Mistral Lake without a permit, am I liable to get banned or otherwise face official in-game legal action from these places?

Shadow familiars are a somewhat expected sight in Mistral Lake and at an event like the Octum Festival, but otherwise, people are likely going to be unsettled seeing one just floating around in a significantly-populated area. Even not counting their spookiness, they're still made of nether, which is a dangerous substance. And they're not even on leashes! No telling when one might go flying into some poor bystander's face, whether deliberately or accidentally. Even Mistral Lake should probably require a permit for these reasons. Only sorcerers who have proven they have a suitable level of control should be allowed to let their familiars out in public!