Lore Analysis - The Case For Peace [Essay]

[svayvti]

The Zorai
---------
First and foremost the true enemy of the Zorai is not Jena, the Matis or the Tryker, but the goo. A force that they fight almost alone. Compared to that enemy - to their mind - much else isn't relevent. Their stated concerns are wisdom to protect Atys, spiritual enlightenment and knowledge and respect for nature. None of which are particularly aggressive though 'protect nature' would make them fall in with the kami practice of exploding those who overharvest.

The zorai do not appear to be a people to blame the other homin peoples, just the Karavan, and they have a stoic and peaceful aspect to them that would not seem to agree with war.

As with every race the Zorai came together with others to protect Yrkanis and free the Tryker, bonds that should not be so easily broken.

This is the way I've RP'd Svayvti and suited the guild we founded when coming over from AO as Kami followers.

The lore has unfortunately been rewritten and things are being used to justify game mechanics, rather than game mechanics being based around the direction the players take.

[marct]

OOC:

I see a lot of people placing human qualities on our homin counter parts.

There is not a lot of support in the lore and in our recent history for ANYONE but the Trykers to be "free-thinking" and even in those cases, it still appears as a few rebelious Epic-like characters whom have drawn a mass following of an often enamored peoples.

I do not see support for homins to be free-thinking on massive scales. There is support for small, very small groups that band together around a leader that is often off their rocker in one direction or another, or multiple directions. But these barely even make it into the lore.

Noin.

[riveit]

The lore has unfortunately been rewritten and things are being used to justify ...

I'm curious. Has anything in the lore been rewritten recently, say in the last six months or so? I understand that the lore was different in beta.

[sprite]

I'm curious. Has anything in the lore been rewritten recently, say in the last six months or so? I understand that the lore was different in beta.

Ask Neun - he knows some stuff that's been removed recently.

[grimjim]

I'm curious. Has anything in the lore been rewritten recently, say in the last six months or so? I understand that the lore was different in beta.

I definately noticed some changes in the zorai writing but I don't have a seperate copy of the older entries.

[gwythion]

You are looking in the wrong place for the tension. The tension came when the Guild of Elias revealed that Jena was coming with a warfleet to surprise attack and destroy Ma-duk and the Kamis, and (incredibly to my mind) the Karavan confirmed that this was indeed true. Naturally Ma-duk and the Kamis were alarmed and angered by this news. So what we are seeing is a slow start to a Kami vs. Karavan war. The homins are just pawns or proxies. On the other hand, it probably doesn't take that much to cause homins to go to war, they were warring every 5 to 10 years before 2518, so we were about due for one anyway even without alien prodding.

ooc:

It's not just a question of looking in the wrong place in time but of the nature of these societies and the practicalities of the game.

Tension in the modern world comes from a combination of what the media puts out and what people on the street talk to each other about, or go on demonstrations about.

It would have been nice but to be honest rather impractical to have the barmen, stable boys and merchants all start talking of the dangers of the future. To a limited extent there were the various pronouncements and they could have to my mind been better done. In particular the the call to Guilds to show their Loyalty could have been broken up into three sessions over a week, say the first two being rabble rousing type speaches from the leaders of the races and the third being an Emissary of the appropraite faction prefereably not a Homin spokesperson.

There could have been some extra depth from things like Still Wyler trying to keep the peace like Chamberlain and coming back with an agreement only to find it worthless and reluctantly going to war or even being replaced by a prowar faction in the Tryker Council.

The other part that could have been done earlier is the setting up of the roleplay site Chronicles and used that as a medium to communicate tension. Finally as we are not in theory at war at the moment then the first land could have been non-PvP but with fighters of the factions dueling each other to build up the tension. Then based on these skirmishes and verbals fights could then have more naturally led to the next zone being a PvP one.

Just some random thoughts as to how the move to war could have been made more real/RP and interesting.

[thurgond]

Jyudas,

There have been some, er, revisions in the lore since release. Just as the homin leaders revise the history on your amber cubes each time they are recharged, so too have the developers updated the lore to reflect their current interests. While amber/html can be changed at the whims of the powers that be, parchment/paper is not as easily changed by the revisionists. The following quotes are from a beta PDF manual (the printed release manual is identical).

As far back as time remembered, the homin peoples were plunged into the maelstrom of warfare. Beneath the leafy canopy of Atys, rare and short were the seasons of peace. Such was the destiny of Hominkind until…

Present day : For the past three generations, the Homins have been rebuilding their cities. The descendants of the destitute multitudes who never found the rainbows in time, each day come to swell their populations. Witness to this rebirth, the Kitin sentinels observe, peacefully…

Another quote from the end of the timeline for each civilization:

2525 The descendants of the destitute multitudes who never found the rainbows in time, each day come to swell their populations.

From this and other lost lore, the assumed background of player characters is as a refuge from the old lands. The decendants of the homin who learned to tolerate other races in the prime roots are walking around mute in the cities or wandering tribeshomin in the wilderness. The homin slaughtering each other in the Aelius Dunes were born in the old lands. Their parents didn't tell stories of the Edict of Four Peoples, but about how the Fyros unleashed the Fire of Coriolis and the great swarm, or how the Zorai would not let the Tryker within their walls when the kitin came.

Jyudas may say he was born in Pyr or Thesos, but if you follow lore you will say your people were driven from Fyre or an outlying village and wandered the old lands for nearly 50 cycles before you left them to help rebuild civilization.

On another note, I too would have liked to seen more tension between the leaders before the current nastyness. The reason why the leaders were too busy to express this tension was clear once they made their appearences - for many seasons they have been directing their military/crafter complexes towards ever more complex and expensive headgear. The Fyros in particular should have risen up in revolution when they saw where their tax dapper went. Lucky for Dexton, all knowledge of taxation was lost in the great swarming.