What is Xan and where can I get some?

[Hunnic 427]

I was going to do a status comment or whatever it's called.

But since people were discussing about how certain players (I suppose the bigger human nations especifically) didn't care about this world-changing, I just wanted to yap for a second and give my two cents.

I play dwarf and peasant human characters. 
How will my illiterate dwarf or my ignorant and not so well traveled human peasant know of any of this cool lore without SEEING & HEARING of these?

My knowledge on the event thus far is the following:
- Xanists & Paladins = Same thing? They do some cool magic things and Order-like stuff, church is not against them afaik?
- Xan = Apparently some Angel or Aengul guy that is a diety.

- Azdrazi = Bad (Mark Zuckerburg/lizard people) Church is against them, evil. Did I say they were bad?
- Azdromoth = Dragon overlord who is like their host? Like Xan is to the Paladins?

I know this is a very lore-illiterate perspective, because I truthfully have not pushed myself to read much of the cool lore Lotc has to offer.
HOWEVER, these recent events (IF THEY REALLY ARE AS BIG AS PEOPLE SAY THEY ARE) ignorant or not more characters/players should have heard about it.

I get there were supposedly people going around. But not only should they have spoken to NL's (I get some may have been boring and said they didn't want to help) but even if IRPLY an arrogant descendant King didn't wish to help- there should be consequences to that, and these consequences should be hinted at BEFORE the big pacific Rim battle between Xan and Azdromoth so people know its the real deal.

Talking to the Canonist Church could have helped too? I mean most human players skim through their posts?

Could do the event emotes that players get WHEN THEY LOG ON (A lot could miss the server wide emotes as I did)

Heck although I have less than 10 hours of activity & read the forums quite consistently, maybe staff can PIN the event posts? I haven't seen one. (A little meta gaming is good for the soul)

This Age of Dragons thing, and buffed Azdrazi & no more Paladins (even if I don't play Azdrazi or Paladins) sounds awesome and although this is a small playerbase it IS world changing.. Like if it had been spun as a religious thing im sure human players would have wanted to contribute more.

If players/characters don't SEE/HEAR about these things how are we suppose to know?
Anyway, not quite sure how this can be solved but just saying myself and others would have participated if we just had known about it. 


It might seem like I live under a rock- and lore-wise.... I might. 
But just saying, had no clue.
Seems very cool tho, props to the ST team, ggs to Paladins, well done to Azdrazi ig, & hope we get to see the consequences of this going forward

(Haven't seen the blackened sky but thanks for that tech team & ST start spawning dragons or something, im ready for my Skyrim RP.)
Also comment links to the posts regarding this world-changing thing if possible. Thank you

Edited June 4 by Hunnic
Would love to read posts

[TeawithFrisket 2791]

I knew mark Suckerberg is a lizard, THE CONSPIRACIES WILL REVEAL THEMSELVES!!!

[lemonke 2030]

Azdromoth was the good guy all along!!

[Benleft 1015]

46 minutes ago, Hunnic said:

If players/characters don't SEE/HEAR about these things how are we suppose to know?

This was a responsibility purposefully assigned to the player-participants. For example, Templars and Koyo-Kuni as a whole were involved in the eventline because these communities & this nation are closely tied to a Paladin order that TRIED to get them involved. It was possible for nations to be involved, but the attempts to do so were not successful. Maybe this is due to a lack of effort on the part of the event-goers, or maybe it is due to nation-apathy. Maybe both. Either way you, human RPer, are not required to care about Xan and Azdromoth because they mostly haven’t been visibly hurting or helping your communities. It’s a reasonable RP stance to not really care. 
 

My take as an event runner is that it is often bad and cringe of ST to mandate nation involvement in an event designed around lore groups when the lore groups involved are not closely tied to any nations. The most delicate way to handle this is to specifically tailor nation-involvement on a personal basis that uniquely engages the nation’s needs and interests. If a nation is full of people who hunger for materials, entice them with that or threaten their supplies. 
 

I believe that Nectorist has written thoughtfully about the tradeoff of scale that eventrunners must often consider which helps explain the decisions WE made when planning this event. If you are interested in that sort of discourse, check out the discussion on Indiana105’s profile post 

[satinkira 6598]

I've become aware of a fascinating conspiracy theory that Lizard People known as 'Azdrazi' run various governments--Aaun, etc. Always, the operating assumption is that this is bad specifically because they are Azdrazi. I find this close minded and offensive. We shouldn't be biased against Azdrazi per se anymore than we should be biased against people based on skin color or gender: it's their biology, and not fair to hold against them. However, if Lizard People really are running, say, Petra (my nation, which will be my focus because I have the most insight into it), a very fair objection is that they're simply not very competent. I'd rather not focus on my specific views on what exactly the secret discord channel is doing wrong--in this polarized age, one thing both ends of the political spectrum happen to agree on is that the government isn't functioning at a high level. Aren't we better than that? As an alternate approach to hating Azdrazi because they're reptilian, I would argue for a more objective, even handed, less specie-ist/racist approach: we should hold the Azdrazi accountable for poor governance. The polarization of the server, Discord scheming, overly zealos mod team, and impotence in the face of the server-wide catastrophe of new-player-retention all point to poor policy decisions on the part of the Azdrazi. Working together, we can build a better future. One in which humanoids are judged not based on their body temperature, presence of scales, and ability to breathe fire, but on the content of their character and ability to competently govern and participate in the civic process.

[Traveller 2541]

1 hour ago, Hunnic said:

- Xanists & Paladins = Same thing? They do some cool magic things and Order-like stuff, church is not against them afaik?
- Xan = Apparently some Angel or Aengul guy that is a diety.

- Azdrazi = Bad (Mark Zuckerburg/lizard people) Church is against them, evil. Did I say they were bad?
- Azdromoth = Dragon overlord who is like their host? Like Xan is to the Paladins?

if you want an ooc explanation in simple terms then

 

xan = aengul (god) of order, part of lotc's main pantheon of gods (aengudaemons, which are aenguls and daemons (yes spelled like that))

paladins = his mortal forces that source their power from him, they have holy magic

 

the church is/was against them in some nations but i'm not too knowledgeable about specifics

 

azdromoth = the self-proclaimed first ever dragon, mortal, not a god until killing xan, made by dragur (daemon of knowledge) from a mountain, basically just a huge black dragon

azdrazi = the fucked up "children" of azdromoth made by shoving a draconic soul inside of a descendant body. they are dragonmen, they breathe fire and stuff

heralds = dragon cultists

 

the 'in a nutshell' reason they had beef is because xan is (in azdrazi/dragon eyes) a genocidal maniac to dragons, and azdromoth wants godhood. he can knock out two birds with one stone by killing xan then taking his godhood (which is what he did) and with no genocider left, all the dragons are free to arrive and give you skyrim larp

 

thanks for listening to my ted talk

 

EDIT: i thought instead of just spewing ooc stuff u should probably really find out irp i should give my opinion on this topic

 

i think the eventline was pretty well "advertised" to general communities, even i myself made a recruitment post and placed physical signs around cities with links to it. however, nobody (rightfully so irp) wants to work with the azdrazi OR paladins lol so idk what you want any of us to do, if ur character (again, rightfully so) doesn't want to work with either side why would u be involved in their war mostly not even on aevos

 

Spoiler

 

[Jentos 7211]

The short answer is that many rp groups are typically xenophobic to types of RP that do not fit their pre-prescribe narrative. It's what made the Lectors so distinct (and effective) because they directly interacted with all forms of RP. At the same time however - it's impossible to make nations "care" - which in effect makes it harder for the players within to be aware of ongoing eventlines. 

 

I know for a fact that paladins made a variety of posts asking for support from nations and sent ambassadors which all failed to make the human playerbases (through nation leaders) really care all that much. Likewise, Azdrazi have also reached out both on forums and in game. Neither groups were especially hard to find on the map if you asked around (the azdrazi base is exactly where you'd think it'd be on the dynmap). 

 

A mix of forum posts, and world-wide event emotes should have alerted any to the fact that things were changing, that consequences would occur. However a lot of players have had a hard time considering any of these seriously until it was too late. 

 

When it comes to any magical group, many player bases will have engrained OOC apathy that really sours the possibility of positive encounters. This is hardly anything new, back in 2015-2016 human players IRP and OOCly derided any magical characters. I know that today, still, some human role-players still make players agree to some OOC based contract that they won't become a spook or get magic. 

 

To some extent, the problem you're facing is a facet of player culture which I must admit has gotten significantly better in the years but is still very fierce and undeniably present. There's also the fact that nations don't really "gain" anything out of this - we'd think nations wouldn't really care about getting involved, albeit it definitely would have allowed for the furthering of narratives, which I think some players only realized a few days ago. It's tempting to think that there's some feeling of "regret" for many not to have participated, but it's not like this is something that can be assumed, let alone super-imposed on others. On a personal level, I personally only wish nations cared more for the implications or lore and story events. It makes for a more dynamic and impactful world. Naturally, that takes willingness. 

 

But another issue also is that a lack of information is to be expected IRPly. Knowledge can be very expensive - and very powerful. It takes time, effort, and connections to remain in the loop. Considering this, it can be hard to really blame anyone or anything - rather its a logical outcome of esoteric RP. 

 

In the future, I think most of anyone can have access to these eventlines. But it takes work and willingness from players. I think most never really paid attention to this until they realized that there would be actual consequences (aka the moment Xan died), which I find kind of sad. Both paladins and azdrazi have extensive cultural elements of RP, with specific religious dogmas and ritual as well as multiple "cultures" so to speak (I can easily count 3-4 different azdrazi cultures currently in existence). 

 

 

[Onnensr 738]

The Paladins (unholy idolators) and their God (Zurg from Buzz Lightyear but wearing white and gold) were defeated by the Azdrazi (the armies of Lucifer) and their God (Beelzeba'al the BEAST of Revelation). Now the sun is eclipsed (Dark Souls reference), and we've entered the Dragon Age (from the titular game series, Dragon Age)

[Wizry 579]

2 minutes ago, Onnensr said:

The Paladins (unholy idolators) and their God (Zurg from Buzz Lightyear but wearing white and gold) were defeated by the Azdrazi (the armies of Lucifer) and their God (Beelzeba'al the BEAST of Revelation). Now the sun is eclipsed (Dark Souls reference), and we've entered the Dragon Age (from the titular game series, Dragon Age)

 

 

what the ****

[Ibn Khaldun 7790]

 

I got too old to try and follow the grimdark van trying to entice me with candy to get in.

[satinkira 6598]

1 hour ago, Hunnic said:

Also comment links to the posts regarding this world-changing thing if possible. Thank you

 

 

[Wizry 579]

1 hour ago, Hunnic said:

Also comment links to the posts regarding this world-changing thing if possible. Thank you

[DahStalker 2983]

im xan

[creamynoteblock 2764]

3 hours ago, Hunnic said:

there should be consequences to that, and these consequences should be hinted at BEFORE the big pacific Rim battle between Xan and Azdromoth so people know its the real deal.

most of the eventline happened elsewhere (other realms) so nothing happened here until just now when an aengul died

 

it also just happened a couple days ago and st need to hash it out so give it a little time

[Frostdrop1 967]

To be honest, I've had the same problem. I had a character I was trying to dragonify - but they died during an earlier even, which meant I couldn't really do the event any more. I'm not personally into just making a character to be something - I want to care about that character and build an arc. So I essentially locked myself out of that event entirely with my own mentality. 

Sadly, I also never got anything outside of the satisfaction of my own narrative (which while it wasn't the plan it did end satisfyingly to me). My character was never heralded, never really got any items to rp with, I was locked out and got very little 'Drazi rp outside of the events - so I really enjoyed them because it meant I got to actually engage and would be let inside haha. And the former isn't because the community was mean or anything, to be very clear, but my character wasn't heralded and I was told I'd get a key in rp, I just never did for some reason. It did, however, make it very difficult to enjoy general azdrazi rp when I couldn't access the areas they were in.

 

On losing this character, I was pretty much screwed for participation and what time I did have dedicated to it obviously died with it - which still leaves me in a current rut since I'm busy building up a new arc. I could choose to know the information since I've retrospectively heard it was open knowledge, but my main character is a doofus who doesn't really know much of anything unless he's told - because he's not the studying sort. I managed to get a couple people to mention Xan by talking about the world events for the sky, but that was about it. My other character was able to interact with the things the Azdrazi left - their notes and shrines etc - but because they're dogmatically against things they deem evil like Azdrazi AND Paladins so their general interaction was to destroy said things.

And the Paladins were a group that I struggled to find any way to directly connect to, and even when I did they were kind of difficult to contact. And then my contact for the sadly died before it went anywhere.

So while these are all certainly valid rp perspectives and I have seen them through because that is the appropriate narrative - it doesn't necessarily mean it was the narrative I would enjoyed the most. The character that died because I was doing what I wanted to was the thing I wanted, and because I lost that character I did not have a route back into the rp (unless I wanted to create a character explicitly for the purpose of azdrazing it up). I don't think it's necessarily wrong for ST to choose not to get too involved, but at the same time I don't think it would've hurt to try and nudge more player participation from different areas through one means or another if the playerbases weren't particularly successful in doing so. It could have been that the dragons actually like - showed themselves more - Eldren and Satar - flying over nations. that would have perked heads, but it never really happened as far as I'm aware. Or one of the branching paths chosen could have involved spreading the word etc. Either way, there were ways to do it organically or at least encourage it some more organically.

Either way, I still really loved the overall premise and and hyped with the outcome - I can't wait to see what comes next out of it all.