~ Suggestions & Improvement ~

[Legate of Mineta]

Probably they should.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: I have a rather strange suggestion: in order to maintain Tabin Furenzti's aura of mysterious but not locatable foreignness, at least one hint could be dropped in at least one adventure or event that Tabin is really short for the Burmese name Tabinshwehti. Seriously! When I first came upon that name, I thought of Tabin from Academagia. And the great king Tabinshwehti was also a great military commander who built his power basis by using and befriending foreigners (Mon and Portuguese)...

Whether such suggestions (or parallels) are true, I expect to not learn here and now - but my suggestion remains.

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

Ha! Alright, I will add this to the suggestions.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: 2 suggestions for Miya Hikari:

1. Have her mention a series of books/games from her home country similar to pokemon (based upon capturing creatures and imprisoning them inside extradimensional magical stones) - only to cause horror because such magic would be gates magic if real.

2. Have someone accusing Miya of only pretending to be a noble from a foreign land.

[Legate of Mineta]

Got it.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: 1. Am I the only one who thinks that Zoe Melis could easily become a competent (rather than flashy/obtrusive) criminal with enough support, given her Y1 adventure and need for money? Nothing as risky as theft, but much less obvious but more lucrative endeavors - forgery, cryptography, appraising and fencing stolen papers/books, doing accounting for criminals, and perhaps creating what we on Earth call Ponzi Schemes.

2. Speaking of Miss Melis, I have a proposal for how a gates-magic practising PC could be forced in later years to divulge his/her practise of Gates to Zoe. Zoe acquires (with the PC's help), through disreputable contacts, a document which she thinks is a coded grimoire dealing with secretive magics. Hoping to increase its value and learn more, Zoe enlists the PC in helping her to decipher the document. Zoe is horrified when these efforts reveal that the document claims to be a treatise about gates magic, and fears the attention which possessing (and even bringing to authorities' attention) the document would bring to her. Several options related to destroying, selling, or surrendering the grimoire could be presented (at least one involving the Triplets). But a PC learned in Gates Magic can discover through further reading the grimoire that it is a fake - only claiming to reveal gates magic, but really revealing nonsense. One way to use this information in order to persuade Zoe about the true nature of the grimoire would be to confess that the PC, as a gates mage, knows that it is teaching false things. Then, one possible outcome (depending upon relationship values) could involve Zoe asking for money from the PC in order to compensate her for her grimoire's decreased value as a fake - because Zoe would not be cruel enough in a certain relationship to blackmail the PC explicitly but would want money.

[Legate of Mineta]

I'll send'em on!

[Rhialto]

9 minutes ago, Legate of Mineta said:

I'll send'em on!

I am particularly interested in their reaction to the second suggestion.

[Rhialto]

On 12/20/2020 at 3:24 PM, Rhialto said:

@Legate of Mineta: 1. Am I the only one who thinks that Zoe Melis could easily become a competent (rather than flashy/obtrusive) criminal with enough support, given her Y1 adventure and need for money? Nothing as risky as theft, but much less obvious but more lucrative endeavors - forgery, cryptography, appraising and fencing stolen papers/books, doing accounting for criminals, and perhaps creating what we on Earth call Ponzi Schemes.

2. Speaking of Miss Melis, I have a proposal for how a gates-magic practising PC could be forced in later years to divulge his/her practise of Gates to Zoe. Zoe acquires (with the PC's help), through disreputable contacts, a document which she thinks is a coded grimoire dealing with secretive magics. Hoping to increase its value and learn more, Zoe enlists the PC in helping her to decipher the document. Zoe is horrified when these efforts reveal that the document claims to be a treatise about gates magic, and fears the attention which possessing (and even bringing to authorities' attention) the document would bring to her. Several options related to destroying, selling, or surrendering the grimoire could be presented (at least one involving the Triplets). But a PC learned in Gates Magic can discover through further reading the grimoire that it is a fake - only claiming to reveal gates magic, but really revealing nonsense. One way to use this information in order to persuade Zoe about the true nature of the grimoire would be to confess that the PC, as a gates mage, knows that it is teaching false things. Then, one possible outcome (depending upon relationship values) could involve Zoe asking for money from the PC in order to compensate her for her grimoire's decreased value as a fake - because Zoe would not be cruel enough in a certain relationship to blackmail the PC explicitly but would want money.

Any updates about these questions?

And are there plans in Y2 to have adventures alluding more to places outside the Empire of Man?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

No update yet.

But yes, definitely on alluding to more places.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: In commemoration of nothing on my part, but aware that other people regard this day as sacred, I make the following suggestions and contributions to the world Cyve. Feedback is much welcomed.

1. options for a PC to develop extreme paranoia about Sima Venesico and Lambert Cobo if the following criteria are met: the PC completed the adventures involving Lambert Cobo with the rat-girl, granting the Sword of Kush, and with the Ghost familiar; the PC completed Y1's main Adventure by supporting Ilaro; the PC completed Sima Venesico's Y1 adventure; and the PC is a student at the Schohanwicht. Such paranoia would be based, for the PC, on the fact that Lambert is clearly involved in forbidden magics in a non-controlled way and associated with Sima, who herself seems to have a mysterious agenda involving forbidden magics and predilection for using male students to help her in her mysterious goals - leading the PC to fear that Lambert, controlled by Sima, may expose his own use of Gates magic to the public causing Gates mages to have to go into hiding due to a crack-down/investigation; and leading the PC to fear that Sima may try to enslave him in her own illegal and mysterious agendas.

2. With regard to the adventure which I hope to write involving the talking dolphin, here are some details about it which may be interesting for inspiration even if I never get to write the adventure. The dolphin would be a sotalia guianensis (river dolphin species unique among non-monotremes for having electroreception) suffering from two rapid and seemingly random dislocations. Firstly, it was relocated from its home-river to a stream in Mata ng Daigdig (which I have suggested could be the Cyvean equivalent to Polynesia and Taiwan), where it was taken as a familiar by a student of mastery magic - in a way analogous to the PC's possible Platypus familiar. Then, sometime later, when the dolphin's mage was made a Kinali (isolated in a way associated with puberty rites, for those curious), the dolphin was teleported again as a prank by some of her fellow students - but the teleportation went random and dumped it near Mineta, where it was rescued by a circus. Since then, the dolphin has been causing occasional strange dreams and telepathic emotions in Mineta as it tries to contact its mage again - but it is fundamentally good but frightened. Would this background for the talking dolphin be appropriate?

3. A brief description of aspects of Cyve's India-equivalent:

Three things distinguish this realm (defined as a cultural rather than political sphere - but then, the Empire of Man is similar) from the Empire of Man, as far as travellers (who tend to be mages, religiously motivated, and/or politically aware) are concerned. Firstly, it uses an abugida rather than an alphabet. Moreover, the inhabitants who are aware of alphabets associate alphabets not with the Empire of Man but with Gates Magic. To their north, but closer than the Empire of Man, is a string of cities which use an alphabet (based upon the Chorian but with the additional letters Heta, Digamma, Qoppa, Sampi, and Sho) which was introduced to them by a teleporting Chorian Gates mage who, finding the cities pleasant, settled there with some fellow practitioners of Gates Magic. These Gates mages in some of the cities seized power and formed cults of Gates mages whose descendants, assimilated into the population, rule of some of these cities to this day.

Secondly, this realm lacks a single state religion. Various religious movements have arisen with various attitudes towards gods, humans, and dragons. It is common for state intervention to maintain some form of dragon-veneration, but the people doing this can be belonging to other religions, such as followers of local gods, the Awakened Man's Teachings, and even people who regard all talk about divine salvation and reincarnation (which are common but not universal features of this realm) as nonsense. However, various human-centred religions, whose clergy present themselves as superior to (or aspiring towards superiority over) gods and dragons through various physical, mental, and magical practises and austerities (such as avoiding all magic not astrology) are not unknown and, as long as their leaders do not assert excessive power or interfere with dragon-venerating cults, their practitioners are not persecuted. Common to almost all of these religions, however, is the maintenance of secret knowledge which, when given to people who have been suitably initiated, supposedly grant vast power. In this realm, the Minetan lineage preserving synchronicity would in no way seem strange. Some of these secret teachings have been placed into texts called Tantras (because they are a loom through which readers can weave connections to power, according to the most prestigious language in this realm), whose contents, if studied exhaustively, would be found to be a mixture of nonsense, common spells and phemes, genuinely powerful and rare spells and phemes, rites, cryptographic systems, and descriptions of how to contact, negotiate with, and gain power from various entities - often using Gates Magic as a key step. There are, admittedly, a few sects of the Awakened Man's followers who claim that they have no secret teachings, but they are comparatively marginalized because, among other factors, maintaining secret teachings allows religions to gain support from powerful secular forces in terms of support for schooling and rites. The veneration of the Awakened Man Measureless Light is not as common here as in other realms - and even where it occurs, it is not done so zealously.

Thirdly, this realm has a powerful king. He does not rule the entirety of the realm, nor does he claim to, but only fools would deny that he is the most powerful person within the realm - and some people claim to think that if he were applying his powers, then he could easily conquer the entire realm. He is himself a rather gentle and tolerant sort, who, rather than regarding himself as a conqueror, wants to preserve his united state - which has been difficult for him and for other rulers within his position. He enjoys listening to religious debates and rewarding victors in such debates, and gives charity to all religious orders which present representatives to him and to the poor often. His government oversees, in addition to fortresses, armouries, and state-managed temples, statemanaged schools - one of which rivals the Academagia in age and in learning and attracts students from far to the east and from the west also (but is much less able to attract students from far west due to the Saisynian and Oursouki states' policies), hospitals, resthouses, and roads. The king is a follower of a religion claiming to represent the highest teachings of the Awakened Man, but he does not force his subjects or family to believe as he does - his favourite sister belongs to a sect clauming that many teachings attributed to the Awakened Man were forged by humans and/or dragons and that a considerable subset of such teachings are dangerous Gates Magic. Still, the King successfully maintains religious peace for the most part - although religious debates can get extremely fierce, there is none of the burning of scriptures, destruction of sacred images, and desecration of temples which is common in other portions of the realm ruled by other people and to the west. In the West, the ruler of a major state has tolerated the systematic destruction of what his sect claims are scriptures falsely attributing certain teachings to the Awakened Man.

A common feature of contests, whether magical or religious, in this realm, is that the losers become the winners' students - converting to their religions. This ensures that the quality of the deeds being judged in such contests is either very high or very low - because people who are not either supremely skillful (which is often the case) or foolishly overconfident and incompetent (as is sometimes the case) do not participate in such contests.

Edited December 28, 2020 by Rhialto
edited definition of tantra

[Legate of Mineta]

I'll pass these along!

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Just to clarify what may seem to be a contradiction in my proposal for Cyvan India: although there is no state-instituted religious persecution, there can be considerable violence between religions and religious sects within various polities - which some rulers indirectly encourage and take advantage of.

[Legate of Mineta]

Understood.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: 1. Would it be all right if I were to have Zoe being a lover of reading novels similar to the Hellenistic romance novels (such as the Aethiopica)? I figure that such books might be one source for her interest in beautifying herself during Y1 given her sickliness and scholarlyness.

[Legate of Mineta]

Sure!

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: I hope that Sima Venesico, Miya Hikari, and Zoe melis are not portrayed with differing hairs' lengths in Y2's art, because a poem which I wrote for a Y2 adventure is depending upon all three having hair of roughly the same relative length (long or short can work with the meter).

[Legate of Mineta]

Heh, I'll pass it along.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: I have corrected the definition of tantra (i.e., tantric texts) in my suggestions about Cyvan India. The term tantra is so complex in Real life that I forgot the precise etymology.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Would it be reasonable, in my suggestions for a Cyvan equivalent to Madagascar, to have gates mages recruiting non-mages from various criminal and poor orders in order to help them? I assume that (even if my suggestions be rejected) most gates mages need supporters - and crminals/the poor are easy to get in lands where Gates magic is illegal.

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

Sure.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Would it be all right if I were to have Miya referring to unkaku ("dwellers among the clouds" - a high rank of noble), or would that be inappropriate?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

Go ahead!

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: a funny idea for a random event: Montague Ruffo accuses Miya of only pretending to be from a foreign land, and this insult is seen by the PC, who can, among other options, try to use innuendo to remind Montague about his adventuring during Y1.

[Legate of Mineta]