Religion Revival Discussion (Active RPers PLEASE read and reply)

[Geoni]

Yes I know there has been a worship poll before, but I want to know what religions are emptier than others, and find out how TODAY's community of the RP server feels about religion, and what religion their characters follow.

As the player count on the roleplay server goes up and down, but hardly ever more than 100, I have noticed the activity of religious RP decrease dramatically. Religion in roleplay gives a certain spice and personality into a character, and when different or similar personalities clash, the context of a roleplay becomes more exciting and fresh. Now all of our characters should have religious associations, so this should come out of a character often, which is what I don't see at all anymore. What I also don't see anymore is religious services held in the temples, or the garden (I still see it happening in the garden on occasion, but not very often these days.)

Scheduled worships every few days in game at religious facilities such as the temple(s) or the secret garden should be happening, but they are not. I wouldn't be surprised if one or more of the gods/goddesses came and caused problems and chaos for people because they are enraged that they are not being worshiped and prayed to by them. The fact that the gods and goddesses are real and are still looking over the world of Yliakum is good enough reason for there to be plenty of pious characters in the game. But no, many characters nowadays are less caring about the gods and goddesses, and prefer to do things other than worship and pray. I would think that with all of the distress caused by the latest kidnappings and murders, there would be more calls to the gods/goddesses, but there isn't.

Another issue is that people treat the death realm like it is some ten step game of hopscotch. Even though the map is small because there aren't many people to work on expanding it, the death realm should be a grand and large place that a character can easily lose him/her/kraself in. The OOC suicides just to get back to Hydlaa and make it easier on the player who doesn't want to move their character the way they would ICly is an abuse to the death realm. If your character kills his/her/kraself and realizes it ICly then either they are at peace in dakkru's realm because they worship her, or they are completely insane. Even if your character is insane and you have this character kill him/her/kraself, then it should be a long time before the character pops back out of the death realm. Characters that worship other gods/goddesses than dakkru should fear the death realm and if they were to go through it, it should cause them major trauma. I know this has been discussed before, but the problems of the death realm being abused and not played out correctly are because there is a lack of RPers, and a lack of RPers who have religious characters. Now think about it: why would there be a lack of pious characters in a world where gods have shown themselves to exist? Laziness of the players is my theory.

Also, those of you on the team who play the gods and goddesses, along with GM's that can cause god-like phenomenon in various areas and situations, should be on the gods/goddesses more often, or do those mysterious things more often. The gods/goddesses should be as existent as the characters in game are, even if they do not show themselves to the public but once a year or on a special occasion, the gods/goddesses should still be out wandering Yliakum.  Having them show up on random occasions in the midst of a situation they find important to themselves (a RP, you know...what should be going on in skylab) might be a way to promote more characters to be religious. Why would the gods/goddesses show themselves to people? Because either they feel gracious that they are being hailed, or angry that they are being outspokenly degraded and want to punish somebody. Now I don't know 100% of the settings, and if what I just mentioned could really happen, but I know the gods and goddesses should be more in touch with the world they created or helped create.  As I've read in the history of Yliakum, the gods and goddesses have some character to them.

What can you do to help revive religion in game?

Well play out your character to the religion he/she/kra follows. Think about religion in our world and how it effects the behavior of the people who follow those religions. In Yliakum, it should be even more obvious in a character that they love their god/goddess. Think about the little quirks that come with a pious or even somewhat pious character: the things they wear, the opinions they have on actions done by other people and themselves, what they limit themselves to say, what they value. There are many things that spice up a character when it comes to religion. Even though they are going through some drama these days, Daughters of Xiosia have shown how religion can unique qualities to a character. There are many religious guilds in the game that should be doing more to promote the practice of religion in Yliakum, but I see them becoming less and less active these days. Some don't even have any active players anymore, or have been disbanded. There is no active guild of Dakkru that I know of, nor is there an active Laanx guild (I know there have been guilds in the past that were dedicated to these two religions, but I don't see them around anymore)

That being said, it would be a good idea for those of you who are leaders/big names in a religious guild should hold more services (Events that happen often) Though it is a hard thing to stay in game often, and hold these events on a frequent basis, I think it can be done with a little bit of getting to know other players timezones and when exactly you can all meet up. These things could be a nice break for both players and characters, so that they don't have to focus and worry about the kidnappings, the fighting, the hard working (PLing) and laying around taverns all day. (I know I know, the taverns are a great place to find RP, but unless your character is a bartender/tavern worker or the local drunk/bum, he/she/kra shouldn't spend their entire days in a tavern/den.)

Another thing that would be nice to see done is have new guilds created for the Dakkru and Laanx religions so that new players and old can have some interesting RP with the religions that they choose or have chosen for their characters.

So what I wanted some knowledge of is this: What religions do your characters follow?

a)Talad
b)Laanx
c)Xiosia
d)Dakkru
e)Black Flame (you don't have to tell if you don't want to since you might be worried any characters came to earth and looked at this forum. jk, I know that you are worried some people will take OOC knowledge and apply it ICly and I respect that worry.)
f)Atheist
g)Polytheist [Please state which God(s)/Goddess(es)]

I wanted to tally up how many characters there are in each religion. Also, if you don't mind, tell how strong your character's ties are with his/her/kra's religion(s), or perhaps where they think they find themselves in the eyes of their god/goddess. It wouldn't be too bad if you stated what ideas you have that can help revive religion in game, because by the gods I am determined to try and bring more religious awareness to other characters.

Anyways, vote and reply with something more than criticism that isn't constructive at all. I'll try and tally the votes up if no mod wants to open up a poll. If you aren't active in the game or just don't play anymore, please don't vote. I wouldn't mind hearing your criticism and ideas though.

Edit: It seems I got the poll to work. I put a limit of seven days on it so those who actively come to this forum should vote or tell other players to vote by the end of the 7 days. If the mod decides to delete the poll then I guess I'll have to work with the alternative.

[Sarras Volcae]

i believe it's talad and laanx. sad that i don't remember.

[Tuathanach]

Geoni glad to see you wish to revive the religions, I have previously tried to setup religious lectures/debates but RL has meant it failed . Tuathanach has been taking more interest in Religion of late and hopes to publish a "guide to the gods" in game. Tuathanach was raised Talad by his mother who was a priestess, after her death he cursed and blamed Talad so now follows none of the gods but as he gets older is gaining a greater respect for the gods. He is still as yet to worship any god over the others, he tries to keep an open mind but maybe one day he will be convinced to worship one or more of them.

An idea to make yliakum seem more religous is have more NPC's talking in refrence to the gods. I agree maybe more of a presence from the gods would help but personally I don't think occaisions like xiosimas do a lot to help in the long term, you seem to get a sudden rush of Xiosia followers for a week then they stop when the celebration is over and revert back to what they were before.

A greater   knowlege of the gods is required by players and the best wasy to educate is through other ("educated") players and thier interactions with each other. so maybe if there is priests/priestesses out there willing to it might be an idea if they were to do some sermons, either organised by them selves or a third party like in the religious lecture/debates I previously mentioned. if interested in the debates please contact me and I  will if possible arrange them myself or try to get someone else to. I know before I had volunteers from DOX and Brotherhood of Talad and one person for Laanx.

[LigH]

Please fix spellings: ...the-ist

And: Do I have one vote per character?

[Illysia]

Right now Tel is my main and she is more of a polytheist. Not entirely all that religious but to the extent that she is she gives them all due respect.

Illy is Talad as she is an Enki.

Zan is less of an atheist and more of a secular type that just doesn't concern herself with religion on a day to day basis.

Megheraine is a Xiosia follower but still gives respect to all of them like Tel, on a cover your rear basis .

I forget for Dahserai.

Mirodii has undergone a Laanx conversion while in the DR but has yet to return from there really. The Laanx thing is more or less because she was disfigured and wants revenge so she is identifying more with Laanx these days.

[Geoni]

@Sarras: It is fine just to say that Sarras is polytheist.

@Tuathanach: I don't exactly know why debates between different religions would be prevelant since it isn't lawful to be hateful against other religions in the game. (I might need to re-read some of the octarchy books in game, not exactly sure if that is correct  ) I wanted to mention how Xiosia only comes on once a year when she should more often because she should care about the state of her followers, that being that they are quarreling between each-other and many are supposedly "charmed". I want there to be some Laanx sermons in the temple and some Xiosia sermons in the garden more often, and perhaps sermons in the death realm for those who worship Dakkru, but that requires one to die and stay in the place for a long time, so it could get iffy if done often. I might poke Lilura to start spreading the word of Talad more often since she is the leader of Brotherhood of Talad, and the one around from that guild the most often. I think that a settings refreshment would be nice to hear from some older players that were around when there were guilds of Dakkru and guilds of Laanx. I might poke XilliX to ask him how some things were done in the temple. Anyways, what I want to do is get there to be occasional group worships and happenings in religious centers/locations since that should be happening in game more often since there are gods and goddesses that reveal themselves.

@LigH: I fixed the spelling where I could, somehow my spell check doesn't point out the ie->ei correction that is should have. I can't edit the polls so now i look like Professor dum-dum. 
You should vote for the characters you actively play.

@Illysia: Thanks for commenting, it is a good example of a reply I want to hear from other active players...which I'm not seeing.  

To everybody who took the time to read this far: Please reply if you voted, it would help to know which active characters are pious.

[Illysia]

Here are my little bugaboos with religion...

I would think that Laanx and Talad would be the mainstays of most characters and most that follow Xiosia or dakkru would be recent converts. Especially for Xiosia followers. Many people RP their characters as being long standing Xiosia followers but even Jardett himself, the high priest, only found out about her right before the arrival of her tree in the garden. I was there in the garden the she arrived. She revealed herself on that day and it is unlikely elves brought worship of her with them from Dermorian and it survived down to this day.

I might give Dakkru worshipers a bit of a slide on the revelation thing as more than likely Dakkru would have been always around. According to settings people have always lost life when they leave the DR, it's what stopped the diaboli from going there for kicks, so she might not have revealed herself at the time but she was more active than Xiosia.

However, I will ding Dakkru worshipers on this, death is a scary or taboo thing in almost cultures. Many characters walk around openly with Dakkru trinkets of various sort and that just seems out of place to me. I believe that Dakkru worship is less feared and sanctioned than blackflame worship but still not an "open" religion. Take the event Dakkru's Joy for instance. "What the Dakkru followers do there, no one knows, since none dare follow them. However, rumours encourage those who do not worship Dakkru to stay inside on this night." 

By settings, it would seem as those not apart of the religion know little and few would probably be close to those that are openly followers of her. Now mind you that wouldn't mean that their wouldn't be a lot of Dakkru worshipers or that nobody would be friends with a Dakkru worshiper, it just seems that it would be more subtle than walking around like an emo with skulls all over the place.

[Duraza]

Hrm. I was just talking to Geoni about this in IRC and figured I would make a post.

So, me thinks a good way to possibly get good interest in religion is having a multi-religious event. At the moment I doubt you guys have the man-power to work on all the different religions and try to get a number of players interested in each one. It will be hard to spread yourselves out so thin.

Perhaps, once every month or every couple of weeks you can have one big festival for followers of each religion, incorporating parts of the separate religions into the celebration. This doesn't mean it would be for polytheistic characters but you'd possibly have different characters serving as the official for each religion. Each religion would have a part to the celebration. For example:

1.)A Laanx priest and a few acolytes might lead off with a prayer and church sermon to Laanx in the temple.

2.)The Xiosia Followers (I know you said the Daughters of Xiosia guild is active) might move the event on with you guys paying homage to some natural site. Perhaps planting seeds and such as a token of respect for live and the goddess.

3.) A tournament would follow to pay homage to Dakkru, having warriors show off their skill at battle (and I doubt you -have- to end it in death). Or perhaps you might sacrifice an animal to Dakkru (if she accepts animal sacrifices, not exactly sure).

4.) And then you could do something for Talad. Like an ending prayer for peace and good will in Yliakum. Or something like that where everyone decides to shake hands and be nice and stuff cause that's the type of thing I envision for Talad worshipers (I could be wrong, think of something else in that case!).

It could be a lot of fun, any religious guild that exists can get involved, any players interested in religion can get involved, and you cover everyone in a single huge event. Then after you've run this event a few times, maybe changed up a few of the things done in the event, you start to move to events that are focused on select religions.

Maybe you've got a larger group of Laanx people now who are interested in doing sermons in the temple or gathering money to keep the temple nice. Perhaps, they want to start sacrifices using the Laanx Well (which if I'm correct was the original use of the Well in the temple Lore wise, not jumping down it to speak to a certain rogue if he's still there...)

Maybe a few Dakkru followers want to start expanding the Library of the Death Realm and therefore will start searching for knowledge and rare tomes to add to it. Maybe they'll start cultish practices and sacrifice blood or even burn menki's whole in the Death Realm.

Maybe the Xiosia follo- well then again, you've got the guild. I'm sure they'll keep doing what they do only with even more members to help them do it. Like planting trees, tending to gardens, and protecting the forest.

And the Talad followers can...Do whatever it is Talad followers do. I'm still quite unsure. Perhaps, start something in Gug? Or a showcase of the magic of Light and such. Or yeah, whatever Talad followers do.

My point being, you can't get to all that focus I just mentioned...without having the player power to do so. Start off with a broader goal like a festival for two, three, or all of the religions at once. Then branch off into focus as player power gathers behind the religion in question.

As for Black Flame..... Well those guys are free to keep doing what they are doing.

[Geoni]

This is where the low player count problems comes back to bite all of us who care in the ass. Getting the characters together ICly and having them organize the event will also be a difficult thing to do. I think that presenting a simple picnic near the temple of Laanx would be a good place to start with getting people together and discussing their religions with eachother and how they feel about their god/goddess might allow pious characters to get to know each-other better and perhaps start this event or try and do something more for their religions. This might inspire them to do sermons and get serious about religion.

The things that were to be done in the celebration that you mentioned might be a little to easily disagreeable between different characters, especially the sacrifice portion of the celebration that is dedicated to Dakkru. This reflects what Illysia has said about Dakkru worshipers being more subtle than open to showing others how things are done in their religion and the "trinkets" and rituals that they do. Though there is no preventing characters that already have these "trinkets" and open mouthes to their customs from speaking out (I've seen what Illy was talking about). It isn't as serious as Black Flame is, but they should still be a bit more reserved than free-spirited since much of their religious practices revolve around killing or suicide of sorts. Nonetheless people of every religion should be invited to this picnic or event.

The goal of getting many characters interested in religion is a great one, and if all of us who try and put our brains together and try and accomplish this goal, then moving on to the goal of those brains, which is getting people interested in their religion alone, is a further challenge. If some of the older players came back and scattered seeds of knowledge from their characters to other characters, then it would be great, but I might say that won't even happen given the state of the server today. It also presents the challenge of having spontaneous RP and in character planned RP can defeat the OOC planned RP (a.k.a. /tells [here is where we will meet] type RP) that dominates the server these days. Do we have a choice when it comes to picking IC planned RP over OOC planned RP if that is what most RPers are doing these days?

Anyways, there are only two ways that i can see this event being organized ICly:

1

-People should try and have their pious characters run into eachother and get to know eachother better.
-Get in a religiously diverse place like Kada-el's and RCD during the weekend (a populated time on the server) and try and start a conversation about religion.
-Once people from different religions become friends (might require hard work), then they can put their brains together for this picnic/event and post something on the bulletin boards about it.

2

If all else fails, then I can get my character Eyuqtwarr who is openly conserned about how little religious activity there is in Hydlaa to get so frustrated about the religious absence that she would post something on the bulletin board about getting people together to have a religion discussion to bring more of it into every-bodies daily lives.

Hey, I'm willing to hear anybody post more ideas on how to do this ICly, any constructive criticism about my ideas, or just REPLY to the darn poll. It sounds like the best shot for this entire topic to try and have an event that gets more characters interested in religion, how to do this, is the challenging question.  

[Roled]

Roled is an ardent Xiosia devotee. Along with her Ring, the Goddess herself gave Roled her blessing to start the Sons of Xiosia, which is a religious society not a guild, and the SoX have hosted a smattering of events, dances, parties, and prayer services in the Garden and with Elady at the Stonehead Tavern.

Despite what a nameless character said of him, Roled is mostly pacifist, only kills to eat or to rid the highway of outlaws, rogues and cutthroats who prey on the weak and unwary. Except when he is very very mad and drunk to boot, then he might consider kilingl other people, who shall remain nameless, who call him things like "vicious enemy."

Do you quys find Roled vicious in any way??

AND during the Unodin Festival we had services to all the Gods and Goddesses save Dakkru: The Brotherhood of Talad did a service in the Gugrontid temple, the Iron Fist of Laanx did theirs in the Temple of course, and the SoX and DoX and Call of Destiny did theirs to Xiosia in the Garden of course. All were well attended. No priest or priestess of Dakkru stepped forward to hold the Dark Goddesses service... and well, any other god is just a story told to children to scare them into obedience...

And by the way Roled always sleeps either in the Garden or at the stonehead in Gug. Each time before he sleeps he says a chant by Siteya, one of the Founders of the DoX along with Elady, calling for balance, peace, non-violence and consensus in all decisions. This be Xiosia's own rules, as stated in The Way of Peace.

May the Harmony of Nature surround ye, and may Xiosia guide yer footsteps.

RR

[kaerli2]

Kaerli could be defined as split between Xiosia and Dakkru...or is Xiosia not what people think she is?

[Maisent]

Maisent is a humble servent of Laanx,
as for my other characters:

Malanu follows Dakkru
....
And tons more i won't mention here

[Fyrre Tijorra]

Fyrre's religion isn't completely clear, but it's closest to atheist. She grew up loving nature and thinks of animals as equal to the Races. She doesn't want to worship Xiosia though. After finding Xiosia surrounded by a crowd in the Secret Garden, Fyrre heard her say to shun atheists. She thought this was very unfair and hasn't really liked the goddess since, but respects what she's done for nature.

She only read about and hasn't had any real experiences related to other religions, so she barely knows what they're like, but would definitely be interested in going to some sort of event that explains them and welcomes possible newcomers. If she met a god who didn't seem to dislike anyone just for not worshiping them, she might be more convinced that the gods are better than everyone else and really are worthy of being prayed to (and whatever else it is that happens with religion).

I think having a separate event for each religion would be best. It seems like religion hardly ever comes into conversations and when it does, it doesn't take a lot to get characters who don't worship the same god into an argument.

[Geoni]

To those of you who actually replied, thanks.

I honestly don't think that any revival is going to happen if only 29 characters in the game right now care about religion, which is at the heart of the settings of the game. I've quit for many reasons, this low amount of players that care about the settings being one of them. If anybody wants to take my idea of having a simple event to slowly revive religion, or if somebody wants to try and create a religious guild themselves, I wish them luck, and advise that they read the settings, and what guilds have been successful and unsuccessful in the past.

There are now 2 characters that worship Laanx, minus 1 because I voted in that section, 7 talad worshipers, 6 Dakkru worshipers minus those who don't stay in the settings of a dakkru worshiper, 5 Xiosia worshipers, and 2 BF characters that loom in the shadows. I wish you luck with trying to revive religion with this amount of pious characters. Yet another sad problem caused by the low player count, which is caused by things I don't want to argue about.

[Zytorr]

Hey Geoni, keep in mind that only a small handful even write in the forums. Not so good for polls or trying to determine what players think.