Team Vernal

Zitto

Please let this be taken with the caveat that I know my understanding of end-game balance is poor, and that this is more wishful RP thinking than anything else. Moreover, even if this idea wasn't nuts, it'd be a mess to implement. I am mostly interested in people's thoughts about the overall concept.

At least a couple of characters I know, like @Portius and @Marcella, and presumably many characters I do not know, have an aspect of Vernal vs Elder tension in their RP. It tends to revolve around the fact that all the sharded races came from gods, that the shards rather than the elders stuck the Soulless in their cans, and that it at least used to be possible for shards to ascend to some aspect of true divinity with ascension to the Immanidivinus. There are useful tools you only get from the Elders (i.e. shrine and cult powers), and the various flavors of divine favours are only accessible if you offer to an elder god, so there isn't really too far to run with this train of thought other than to generally imply to an EG that you maybe don't buy all into their hype. I think it would be at least thematically interesting to be able to make this a more compelling dispute.

I would be excited for the prospect of something like cults outside of divine orders. In the most general terms, a demigod would be able to complete a quest of difficulty/time investment comparable to an org epic, the completion of which would grant them a line on their brief honors (rather than full) and allow them to establish a Vernal cult. The line should be edgy, since this act would represent turning your back on the Elder Gods. Something like "In an act of supreme contempt, he/she has established a cult to his/her own divine spark." The establishment of a Vernal cult would allow the possesses to establish a single shrine and potentially have cult members, as well as granting access to a very modified (and overall inferior) form of Veneration. Rather than the 'taking on aspects of your god' theme of veneration, it would thematically revolve around sufficiency and the supremacy of the shards. Some ideas that have been bounced around are the ability to silence shrines or improving defiling effects, increased essence from offering god-realm mobs, an improved demi-zap, and possibly a mechanical way to earn a Vernal Truefavour in the place of favours you'd otherwise earn from offering to gods. It should go without saying that forming a Vernal cult is an incredible insult to all of the Elder Gods, and while they may not zap you into the ground, such an individual should expect absolutely no support from them and be prepared for some antagonism.

The biggest concerns the people I've discussed this with and I have are:

Balancing the effects/benefits in such a way as to make it interesting for RP, mechanically useful, and yet not a pain in the ass to the actual players behind the elder gods

Degrading some aspect of the prestige of being granted a cult by a god. Presumably, dealt with by making Vernal's equivalent to veneration overall inferior.

Every demi around who isn't in an order potentially having a cult. Possibly addressed by Vernal cults more effective with more members, to create an incentive to join one rather than make your own.


While this isn't necessarily the most realistic idea, I'm interested in anyone's thoughts or comments on this or more generally on Elder vs Vernal fluff and ideas.

Edit: The forum is butchering my format/font.

Portius

Random collection of if-there-was-infinite-development-resources things:

-Lots of room for customization artifacts here. Pay to customize your one shrine (Appearance or maybe even the message for offering), for example. I know that Portius would sooner have a book in which followers record their great deeds in a sort of infinitely long epic poem about the cult than a normal altar for burning corpses.

-Family type style customization for offerings. A cult to Portius would be extremely different from a cult to say, Marcella, and one way of differentiating would be to widen the ways of generating essence (for gods, too) and then let different cults weight them differently. For example, a cult to Portius would gladly sacrifice a huge amount of the essence from offering corpses to get even a small amount from writing books.

-Can never be in an order and make or be in a vernal cult, naturally.

-Tie them to orgs. Make one or two of the powers granted by being a vernal cult leader be org dependent. A Hallifaxian who does this would presumably not come out of it exactly the same as a Gaudiguchi.

Aerotan

In the beginning, there was Soll Peulus, who, by his greatness and the grace of Dionymus became the Vernal God Ayridion, the white flame. He was mortal no longer, but truly a god. In time, He came to grow weary of this division, and yea did Estarra hear His pleas. Thus a plan was devised, and an answer found. Ayridion, in His benevolence sacrificed His divinity and forever severed the Immanidivinus from Vernal reach, thus creating the first Vernal Ascendant, Ilyarin, and giving rise to an era of Ascension. The cost, however, was that no more would mortals be able to access the pure Immanidivinus, the energies of creation itself would remain solely the purview of the Elder Gods and Avechna the Avenger.

Zitto

@Aerotan, the idea is not to make players mechanically gods, but to give them RP leverage for telling the Elders the Basin doesn't need them. Under no circumstances should a Vernal cultist be in any way actually equal to an Elder god, the intent is for them to be able turn their back on the Elders while providing a mechanical platform to make up for the opportunities that you lose by doing so.

Aerotan

Fair enough, Mea culpa

Portius

On the epic questing part:

-Make a bunch more quests than are actually required, and let people choose X of them to do for the epic so that they have a personalized experience. Maybe make them repeatable and have each one generate a sequential honor like for the org epics, but have something that encourages doing more than one.
--Quest types:
---Taking the essence of a plane into yourself. This could be something like preparing a ritual on Celestia and getting the backing of all the Supernals to absorb some of the fundamental matter that makes up Celestia, or creating a special forge on Fire to burn away some of your spiritual impurities. That kind of thing, as suits each plane.

---Quests that steal power from the gods. Maybe you go into the Undervault and steal a portion of Illith's remaining essence to consume and empower yourself. Could kill goloths/dominators and consume their essence similarly. Most of this would have to go with the soulless and be kind of tainted, I think, but you could conceivably have something like draining part of Zvoltz's essence out of the Seal of Justice, too.

---Quests related to the Vernals. You could do a lengthened and more difficult variation on the Tosha quest to try to ascend through their branch of enlightenment, or you could supercharge vernal artifacts and use them to empower yourself.

-----Final quest should probably be about making your altar. Have various components that people can choose (obscene amounts of essence, cosmic mobs, god realm mobs, components obtained through doing other quests) and when they have X their altar is complete and they can form a cult through it.

Maligorn

Aerotan said:

In the beginning, there was Soll Peulus, who, by his greatness and the grace of Dionymus became the Vernal God Ayridion, the white flame. He was mortal no longer, but truly a god. In time, He came to grow weary of this division, and yea did Estarra hear His pleas. Thus a plan was devised, and an answer found. Ayridion, in His benevolence sacrificed His divinity and forever severed the Immanidivinus from Vernal reach, thus creating the first Vernal Ascendant, Ilyarin, and giving rise to an era of Ascension. The cost, however, was that no more would mortals be able to access the pure Immanidivinus, the energies of creation itself would remain solely the purview of the Elder Gods and Avechna the Avenger.

Wait, he created the Threshold Abyss because he was feeling bad?

Kalnid

Nah, it was because he was incapable of handling the Dread Lord of Contagion in a way other than making it impossible to reach the Immanidivinus.

Marcella

That's couched OOC problems in IC language. As far as I know, Ayrideon bailed because the other admin actually wanted him to *volunteer coding* and he was like 'screw that, make me a mortal again.'

Aerotan

I was also under the impression that Ayrideon had essentially won Lusternia, and his prize was that he had to stop playing Lunsternia. I'm sure there was another intended outcome to the Dread Lord event that wouldn't have involved the Immanidivinus access being revoked, but I got the feeling that the admin felt like ascension-to-elder-status as a prize for beating the ascension events just didn't fully jive right. It put someone in the position of a volunteer admin without the vetting process of Ephemeralhood, while at the same time forcing a player into a role he might not be fully comfortable with since he still had to essentially stop playing the game in order to function as a divine.

Either way, my point was more that Vernal ascendants aren't really Gods, and can't become Gods anymore. I'm less comfortable with the idea of them forming cults without Divine intervention, but if the idea is that they're less effective then full-on cults, but with more player freedom, I'm not as worried.

Portius

Because spitballing ideas is more interesting than staring at the screen waiting for a node to go down, here's what I'd do for the building the altar final quest.

-Dedicate the location. Probably do this by talking with city patrons OOCly to make sure you can get your sole shrine (hereafter called the altar) in a place that you like.
---Build the altar. Anyone can contribute pieces, and it takes tons of them. It should take weeks to do alone, but faster if you have people helping you. The pieces you can use are determined by which quests you did during the sequential honors (see above)
------Each of those quests enables pieces for your altar. If you don't do the associated quest, you can't use it. Having more options means less waiting for respawns, so there's an incentive to do a variety.
--------Not all pieces need to be created equal. Doing an elemental plane's quest might let you put that kind of essence into your altar, but one essence wouldn't do much. On the other hand, it's easy for anyone who wants to help you to contribute essence.
----------A rule of thumb that I would use is that every quest gives access to one small piece that you can get just by killing/influencing/minor quest, and that every one of the quests in the epic cycle can produce an item for people who are completing it a second+ time that works as a big piece. So if you did a Tosha quest, you might be able to put Toshan spirit corpses into your altar for small pieces and finishing the quest again might give you a Toshan Sutra that you can add as a much bigger contribution.
--Once the altar is finished, do a little ritual on it to summon your shadow, just like in the introductory tour. Kill it, offer it to yourself, and your cult is founded.

After the cult is founded, you could use those components as a source of essence. Make it so the big pieces can be offered.  Vernal cults get full essence value from those quest items while gods get a fraction, while gods get full value for corpses and vernal cults only get a fraction for those. This differentiates the two and helps keep the theme of vernal cults being people who empower themselves through their actions as much as through absorbing the essence of other things.

Saran

The Ayridion "thing" as far as I'm aware was primarily that it just didn't work out as intended and while he was a good addition to the group, yeah, it just didn't work out.

As to the actual purpose of the thread, you're probably going to get some divine hate for this but tbh, I would like to see it come about. The whole concept of divinity and the like is absent in the game. We have immortal and powerful beings yes, but they're idk... I've never been able to see the relationship between my character and a divine as one of anything more than them maybe being a mentor.

I can't find it, but from memory cults were originally going to be something an ascendant makes outside of an order, it was later tied to gods for reasons.

Shaddus

Or, you know, we could quit conjecturing about what happened or didn't happen. I like to gossip more than most people, but talking about people like this is rude.

Aerotan

Originally I was just bringing it up since it's what seperates Vernal and God these days.

To be on-point, though, since we're spitballing ideas, this is more cult than order, so it might make sense for this to function like a seconary pool of essence. Not, like, the kind you can spend on demipowers, but the kind Gods get, and you can then spend this on new powers/toys for your cult, like minishrines that can only affect a more limited area, or a special entrance to which a non-aethership-manse can be linked, on top of the things that cults can normally spend essence on. Give divine-sourced cults sharp discounts on this sort of thing, even. Then add in a decay so that Bob's Merchant Cult that really only contains Bob, Jeremiah, and Richter can't afford to sit on their laurels and passively collect essence. They'll need to work for it just like an order would, or harder.

Zitto

I am very much inclined to agree with not wanting to turn thread into speculation about a player.  In any case, I didn't see vernal cults as having anything to do with the Immanidivinus.  It's more about a cult of personality and an attitude of shard self-sufficiency.  It certainly shouldn't allow someone outside an order to do everything someone in an order can and it should never put someone on equal footing with the gods.

Tremula

This seems like something that was once used in Ascendance. If the cult you're describing works roughly along the same lines, it could work really well!

[spoiler]

Veneration          Form a divine cult to venerate you.

• Master  0%
• Syntax: CULT
          PERFORM RITUAL OF INTROSPECTION
  Domotheos: None
  Cost: 10,000,000 Ascendant Essence to form a cult
            50,000 Ascendant Essence to add an Order member
             1,000 Ascendant Essence per month per cult member for upkeep
                50 Cult Essence for Introspection
   
  An
  Ascendant is a paragon to which all mortals must aspire, and so an
  Elder God may choose to form an Ascendant Cult with you. You must be a
  member of the Divine Order of that Elder God in order to form an
  Ascendant Cult, and the essence cost to form such a cult is staggering
  to both yourself and to the Elder God.
   
  Once formed, a Cult is a
  sub-sect within the Divine Order which has a pool of essence that is
  distinct from your own, which may be drawn upon to perform rituals that
  will benefit yourself and your Cult members. When members of the Cult
  offer at shrines to the Elder God, a portion of the essence will be
  tithed to your Cult's essence pool.
   
  When members are inducted
  into your Cult, it will draw upon your personal essence. Every
  Lusternian month thereafter, there is an upkeep cost drawn from your
  personal essence for each member of the Cult. If you leave the Divine
  Order then your Cult will be dissolved, since the Cult is tied
  inextricably to the essence of the Elder God with whom you have formed
  it.
   
  The Ritual of Introspection is the most basic of rituals,
  one which allows you to sense the general location of all the members of
  your Cult.

[/spoiler]