Hiya, Nice to Meet You All

Ilasri

Greetings!

I've most recently joined Imperian about a week ago and hopefully I'll be able to meet most of you guys IG at some point. I'm not new to MUDs, but I still have a few questions about this game, namely:

A) What is the primary source of conflict in this game? I know there are three factions, but I was wondering how each of them relate to one another and what I can expect. (Although more than likely I should find out IG, so I apologize for asking this question)

and

How would you guys describe the RP around this game? I'm guessing the same as most fantasy MUDs but usually each game (especially IRE MUDs) seem to take a different approach.

Thank you all. I'm really enjoying my time here and hopefully I'll stick around.

Sarrius

The source of conflict is a morality question about magick use and power sources. I'll break it down:

Anti-Magick: Consists of Antioch and Ithaqua. Antioch, before the death of the Gods, was a sort of 'city of the Gods' holy worship schtick. Their disagreement with magick and demons came from bad experiences and divine mandate. After the death of the Gods, the city opposes magick because they don't need gods anymore for them to see why magick is pretty dangerous (in their opinion). Ithaqua is a forest council whose themes are somewhere in the 'survival of the fittest' territory, and their anti-magick attitude used to be more pronounced towards anti-demon sentiments than anything. This has sort of rounded out, though.

Magick: Celidon and Kinsarmar are in this circle. Magick has always been a questionable 'grey area', if only because of the leaders the circles have chosen for years. The circle's philosophy is that using magick is cool, but demons and demon-fueled magick (necromancy, etc) are off limits due to safety, corruption, etc. The circle splits in two between Kinsarmar and Celidon, whose actual roleplay direction I am unfamiliar with these days.

Demonic: Stavenn and Khandava round out the list of organizations in Imperian as Demonic circle citizenship areas. Stavenn, in earlier years of the game, was a brutal, heavily-armed Empire running around endorsing the usage of all magick and all demons.That has changed in recent years and Stavenn has smoothed out to focusing their Imperial roleplay inward rather than outward. Anyways, years later, Khandava converted from Magick to Demonic and revamped their RP, feel, and etc to a pretty badass place. Demonic circle's basic creed these days is that magick is a perfectly viable power source, and demons are pretty kosher too!

I would describe the roleplay as pretty decent, so long as you know where to look. A lot of people's RP here is very 'muted' - it is passive, they remain in character, they uphold the environment, but you won't find everybody dropping 5 line emote freestyles. A great place to find roleplay in your circle is to join a cult. Ask around about which ones are active.

Bathan

Welcome!

Khizan

I'm going to give you an alternative answer to question A, a more mechanical one.

The prime source of conflict in this game is shardfalls. Crystal shards are both a currency you spend to research certain special powers, and a reagent you spend to use those powers. Every few hours, a bunch of these shards fall from the sky and land in the ground, spread randomly over an entire area. Everybody rushes out to that area to harvest those shards for their side(demonic/magick/anti-magick as per Sarrius' post). This is most commonly done by killing the hell out of every enemy in the area to be sure they don't get a chance to harvest them.

There are two important things to know about shardfalls:

1. PvP inside a shardfall is subject to the 'Vegas clause'; what happens in a shardfall stays in the shardfall. You cannot be attacked or hunted after the shardfall is over for a fight that went on inside the shardfall. So go out and kill for your city! You'll still get to hunt or fish or explore in peace after it is over.
2. Death in PvP costs you nothing; you do not lose overall experience for it, but you can gain experience from kills. When you get a kill, you get PK experience, which is added to your overall experience AND tracked separately. When you die in PvP, you lose PK exp from the PK exp tracking, but it is not deducted from overall experience. So getting kills can gain you overall levels, but dying cannot lose them.