I find the idea of racial factions to be a bit ridiculous. Just because I've quested in Ojaveda, suddenly Enkidukai see me as their messiah; I find it must more realistic to believe that the organizations of which these Enkidukai are a part may see me as special, but saying that an entire race sees you as some great person because of what you've done for a few of their kind borders on the extreme. It's as if the racial factions neglect that individuals of that given race have any sort of differing viewpoints or personalities. Could these types of factions be reevaluated for implementation?

Now that I've written a title for this post, I honestly don't know how much more I can say without spelling out the obvious. To the PlaneShift team, new players will not stay with this game when they see the kinds of typos that are present. Just a few minutes ago, I experienced a loading screen message that I'd never seen before, which asked for "artist, writers, (something else) can join us in making this world." It's jarring even when I quote it, because the way I quoted it is the exact same context in which it's used; the sentence is a run-on, and in context, it comes after a colon to break down the kinds of people the team is looking for.

This typo could be avoided by proofreading for 5 seconds. I know that nobody is being paid for this project, I've been here a long time, and not everybody is a native English speaker; however, I've taken some steps to learning German, and I would never let a sentence like that pass if I were writing in another language. The game's quests, NPC dialogues, character creation, and skill descriptions are riddled with typos such as the one I mentioned above. I would gladly volunteer to find each and every one of these and correct them myself if I can be guaranteed their removal. Unfortunately, for all the time I've been here, some of these have never changed, and new players can easily pick up on that upon a little research into the game's age. It may seem small, but in advertising a game, typos make or break the credibility of the developers. Can someone on the team look into these? If it's preferable that I make a bug report for each and every one of these that I come across, I will. They've lasted too long to be natural.

For lack of a better thread title--I think I'm done lurking. I've been missing the game lately, and I read pretty frequently some awesome-sounding plots that y'all have dished out in the last few months. My big concern is that, since I started logging in again in the last 3 days, I've only seen a consistent 28 players online. I know it's a new release and there are always issues downloading the new client and getting started again, but can I expect more than this in the near future? I still remember the days of 200.

Suno

I can't remember if a question like this has been asked before, but since things change all the time, I'm curious of the up-to-date notion of someone dying while they're already in the Death Realm. Would they simply appear in another portion of the realm, or would this be a true death? Or, could one devoted to Dakkru do this repeatedly to avoid true death while already dead? Thanks.

I'm sure a lot of people have seen the "oldbies need to come back to the game!" threads, but... well, this is a bit different. Sort of.

I've been thinking... a lot of roleplay from way-back-when has been lost in the annals of nothingness. I was wondering if any older players would be willing to bring back their old characters (whether they were formerly killed, died, took a "long journey somewhere else," or anything that would have rendered them impossible to make a comeback in Yliakum/the game). I myself have been curious about how the new leveling system will play out, but I wanna come back with a character (or maybe a few) that I was unable to continue roleplaying with due to this reason or that.

There's something else too, though. Because a lot of these characters are lost in history, so are their roleplay scenarios. Therefore, I'd wish that any characters brought back never act as if those roleplay events happened. Meaning any ideas from before can be recycled in the new community and environment for a newer population to enjoy. A large part of what people miss from back then was, in fact, the events that took place, and new settings or not, they can easily be melded to fit what's here today. So anyone who wishes, I'd like to hear from you and we can see about getting a "new old playerbase" going with characters that we've let collect dust in the burial wells.

Part 1

"Why is something so simple coming so close, and yet always evading my grasp?!" the Xacha shouted as he slammed his fists on the table before him, the room shuddering from his magical rage. His muscles returned to their original, slim-built state, and his breathing stabilized as he noticed what a fool he was acting. His emotions never got the better of him, and because of this, he knew that he was growing weaker with each passing day. His hair, what was left of it, was thin and black, a little bit falling out with each turn of the clock. What was once a receding hairline became the canvas for his remaining hair to be combed over, the man trying to hide what was happening to him. Of course, losing his hair wasn't his only problem. Being of only twenty-three cycles, the young man looked much older than he appeared, Dakkru's curse afflicting him in ways few had ever witnessed. While others became physically frail for a short time, merely a warning as to what fate awaits those who pass to Her realm, his body reacted as if it was dying, excreting any foreign substances such as food, liquid, and even his own fingernails that he'd chewed off in a panic. His body considered everything to be contaminated, so much so that the substance being forced from the roots of his hair was causing it to fall out, and he couldn't stand for more than a few minutes before succumbing to an uncontrollable bladder or emptying his bowels in other sickly ways. What was left of what could have been considered a handsome young man was now a quarantine site, waiting for death. True death. No... not yet. Not ever.

"I've tried everything... every herb and root concoction, every reputable mage in Yliakum... what's next?" As he spoke, thin hairs fell to the table before him, and more importantly, on top of the strength glyph he had lying there beside many others. Most of them were of the Red Way, but two Azure, one not having been touched, and the other dim with overuse, which was used to help him sleep during his frustration, or at least calm his nerves. "If this goes on... no... that witch!!" Grabbing his remaining hair, which practically flaked into his hands, Orvine doubled over in agony and sobbed, soon after throwing up onto the floor after narrowly turning his body away from the table to keep from ruining his collection of glyphs.

This time, things were different. Stumbling into his chair, not even wiping his mouth or noticing the foulness of his breath, images flooded into his mind. Images of the Dark Crystal, of depictions of Dakkru, of... what? What was that? A creature? No, a man... a Kran, more like it. But no Kran Orvine had ever seen. Kra had a black robe covering kras body from head to toe, with a thick fog erupting from kras hands that looked... skeletal? Awakening from his stupor, Orvine stood from his chair and lightly shook his head. No Kran had the bone structure for skeletal hands, even if they were some evil thing of legend. Though most saw Dakkru as some sort of balance in the chain, some connection between life and death, the man saw only evil. What Dakkru did to him was only a start.

Growing up, most of his childhood friends died in horrific accidents, some causes obvious, others never to be discovered. Bodies were found hacked to pieces, unrecoverable by the Death Realm and Dakkru's "sweet" embrace. Some were so charred that they could barely be recognized as bodies, merely piles of ashes forming the silhouettes of those he held dear. As time passed, and stranger things kept happening, his parents suddenly disowned him without forewarning, banishing him from their home and forcing him to wander village-to-village and level-to-level until reaching Hydlaa. Hydlaa, a place where mystery was never left unsolved under the watchful eyes of Laanx. His new friends would never leave him behind, never fall prey to unforeseeable circumstance... they'd be his forever, where the old names in his life abandoned him, even his own parents.

One day, running through the streets with the other neighborhood children, Jasper, the child with the blonde fur of a proud Enkidukai merchant family, started acting strange. Unlike Orvine, who lived on benches and near stairwells and anywhere he could find comfortable, Jasper grew up in a stable household and always had people to surround himself with.

"Hey Orvine! Y'know something I like to do when I'm lonely?" the young Enkidukai asked.

"What?"

"Well, I've been feeding this rat in the sewers--"

"Why the hell would you do that?" Orvine asked, foul language not escaping his vocabulary.

"and while I was there, a bunch of people found me and started chasing after me." Jasper made sure to wait this time before going on, but Orvine was tapping his foot and waiting for where the fun came in. "They were in the middle of some kind of ritual."

"Ritual?"

"Yeah. I wasn't sure what it was at first, but when I went back the next day, to that same place, there was nothing... but blood!" Jasper threw his arms in the air at the last part, making his voice dramatic enough to actually scare Orvine.

Coming to his senses, the Xachan child grunted and shook his head. "You're stupid. Why do you get all the money and the girls, anyway? And what does this have to do with being lonely?"

"Oh, I was going to suggest feeding rats and having them keep you company," Jasper explained, "since, you know... you're a street-urchin and all, but then I remembered what happened and thought I should tell somebody. You don't know anyone else to tell, so it's not like those creepy people are gonna come and find me from you blabbering to everyone."

"Right... well, when are you gonna invite me to pay them a visit?"

"Who, the rats?"

"The creepers, moron," Orvine said a little too loud. The other children on the street stared at him for a second, then he yelled, "I tripped over some creepers yesterday and he keeps saying they were flowers. What kind of flower is that durable?!" He knew he sounded awkward, and his face flushed... what a stupid cover story. Of course if an entire neighborhood of kids goes down into the sewers, someone's gonna catch on. He turned back to Jasper, who was grinning ear-to-ear at him. "Shut up."

"Don't worry, everyone expects stuff like that from a street-urchin. C'mon, time's wasting. They might be sacrificing some more people!"

Escaping the crowd of children at play, Jasper and Orvine weaved their way through the houses, out of sight of the city guards, and behind Kada-el's, only knowing where the place was even located because Jasper's parents enjoyed expensive wines. Through a hole practically carved in the pavement, was a ladder leading down to the sewers of Hydlaa.

"How'd you come across this?" Orvine asked, fidgeting with the ladder to see if it wouldn't toss him off if he puts his weight down on it to descend.

"My parents got drunk and started throwing away all their money to hear some idiot play the pan flute, so I just kinda wandered away and was told by their escorts not to go too far from Kada-el's, and... this was just in the way while I started running circles around the building."

"You could've found me. I haven't heard anyone play an instrument before."

"That's because you live in the streets. You have to pay to hear them, that's why they play. Now c'mon."

Grunting, Orvine climbed down the ladder, scared to death that something was going to happen to him. His hand touched a cobweb, and he froze for a second, thinking someone grabbed him and was about to stick a knife in his eye. This thought became a reality as the spider weaving that web landed just above his eyebrow. He screamed and fell back from the ladder, shifting it backwards and knocking Jasper right off the top as he began his descent, falling on the ground before Orvine as Orvine's weight piled on top of him flailing and crying. Jasper shoved him off, kicking him in the groin and grinning as Orvine focused on the new pain in his sensitive area instead of the fear created from his nervous hysteria.

"The hell's... wrong with you?!" Orvine finished his last words in a grunt, still reeling from the pain.

"I nearly broke my arm, idiot! Thanks for knocking down the ladder!" As Jasper said this, Orvine's attention went behind them to the ladder that was now laying parallel on the ground, no longer an exit back to the surface.

Standing, Orvine grunted again with his legs quivering beneath him. "We can put it back up later! It can't be that heavy." He looked at it closely, at its solid marble design, and shrugged. Not heavy at all. The little voice inside his head kept telling him he was going to be trapped in the sewers forever, but who listens to that thing, anyway? All he knew was that he got mixed up with a stupid kid and his stupid idea, and stupid... wait, what was that noise? Was that a woman screaming? Great...

One idea that's been floating in my head is the concept of anti-magic scaling. This would be where for every few levels you gain in any way, your anti-magic skill also increases. It seems like it would make sense, since your knowledge of the Ways would also influence your knowledge of their weaknesses and ways to negate them into little to no damage. To make it simple, it wouldn't "tilt the scale" based on whichever Way you've trained, so that if you have 100 DW, you'd only know how to negate DW spells, but since inherently casting magic is all the same concept, you would have small knowledge on how to negate all of the Ways, and this would increase the more you train and the more diverse your magical abilities are. If you're a master of every single Way, then there isn't much training left to do in anti-magic, but if you've trained where you want to be with specifically DW or RW, let's say, then you could still go for individual training in just anti-magic for defensive purposes, but otherwise, these defenses would scale with how strong your offensive skills in magic already are.