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The Arx Secrets Thread
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Ray started from nothing, just a criminal henchman with a cliche’d backstory.
He found out over time that he was a quarter Nox’alfar. He found out that his father had been a holder of part of the Will of Baalphrigor who’d sacrificed thousands to the Abyss in a war, and who’d killed Ray’s mother.
He found a woman who could cope with him and got married, and a man who could cope with them both but couldn’t get married but was a not-quite-husband. He found a goddess who could cope with him and swore to Her service. He rose to be a Second of his crime family and one of the top-ranking members of the criminal underworld. He made friends and he made enemies, and he was the protege of the Queen of the Compact, while his wife was a successful businesswoman and a ‘successful businesswoman’ and a protege of a Voice of the Crown and his not-quite-husband was a Knight-Lieutenant of the King’s Own.
He ended up dying to save a bunch of souls in a shardhaven, and his goddess and his patron brought him back to life. He became an Aspect - and then went and performed the Paladin rite on his own and for one goddess only, and became the Paladin of Death, because that was a much safer title to use. The Wheelspinner came to him, and in the last battle he did what he could.
House Mazetti tried to ennoble him, often. House Velenosa made the offer as well. He’s accepted on behalf of Tanith and his child(ren), and House Calvaria will rise.
He started with nothing, and he ended up with so much, and I’d like to thank Herja for a truly stunning storyline and Tanith and Austen’s players for some absolutely amazing times - and the rest of Ray’s friends for putting up with the irritating murderous git and letting him be around regardless.
It’s been a whale of a time.
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Isolde is the reincarnation of Primeria Aetheris. She avoided being archduchess after Esera died because it would draw too much attention to herself. But ultimately was like ‘eh who cares who knows’ when the apocalypse arrived.
Alessia’s past life was some Rex’alfar/cat khati person who had an oblivion glaive. Not much else to that past life! BUT it meant the Rex brought the glaive to her current life with a bunch of demon cats. Everytime she’d kill someone, their soul got stuck in the glaive and the Rex’alcats siphoned it for primum. Of course this char went evil!
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I didn’t have a whole lot of time with it but Aconite was Construct crafted by Obsidian and his Magisters in a ritual under Ahj’on in the temple of the Great Reflection to be a Weaponto destroy all non-believers. She was taken out of the Mangaldissi by some slaves who found themselves on the wrong end of a fight with Fidante.
Aco was so poisonous, even touching her briefly held some risk. Contact could range from severe hallucination and euphoria to just ded. She was poisonous right up until her Crossing. Her blood was so caustic it melted people’s limbs off. Needless to say she was just a little aloof and strange due to this.
She explored her roots, where her ‘family’ came from and found out that the bloodline that Obsidian used to create her were a bunch of Serpent Khati who got it into their head to worship the Abyss and set roots in the Saffron Isles. Some of them became shards.
The rest of the story I love but it’s probably boring to anyone but me.
I really enjoyed playing Arx, getting to cobble words together to build great stories with all of you was really the best times I’ve had on a mush in over a decade. I hope to meet folks again in 2.0.
You’re all really amazing! Also Apostate is as previously mentioned an utter Rockstar, a legend. I appreciate him letting me take on this story with an OC right out of the gate.
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Sydney’s mother Clemensia was a famed Cardian performer. She fled from Cardia after a power grab gone awry, and Sydney was born in Arvum. She summarily walked out on Sydney. The man Sydney thought to be her father moved to Arx with her, where he acquired debt with the wrong people, got himself poisoned, and all of his debt fell to Sydney. Being barely into her teens, she got underwater on things quickly, and ended up all but owned by that debt. She took dives for coppers, scraped by, slept in bars and streets, and nearly froze to death in the winters.
Petraea Livy terrified her by gobbling up all the debt she owed to multiple lenders and telling her in no uncertain terms that she would be working for the Scales - and oh by the way, her real father was Cardian nobility who got her entire bloodline killed and Gaius Tullus (a rather potent Cardian noble), wanted her dead.
After a few years of proving herself running a mix of morally murky tasks, Petraea (sometimes prickly and often awkward woman that she was) revealed that she was Sydney’s half-aunt. That being indebted to her was never a real thing, just a way to keep her in sight. She also learned that one of her sisters who escaped Cardia self-immolated herself due to the powerful and uncontrollable nature of her fire magic. She met allies, and she formulated a plan with them to put an end to Marcus Sulla (and then Malar), both of whom were ever just out of reach of their designs. One of them went on to slay Gaius Tullus back in Cardia.
She made wonderful friends along the way, dated freely, laughed often, and drank just as often. She called everyone with more than one syllable by a nickname, wanted or not. She was afraid to tell people she loved them. She reveled in a good spar, but soon realized she hated seeing people die, and took every effort to limit casualties, something that with her bare-handed style she had every ability to dictate without limiting herself.
She broke after being in Bastion. She tucked her tail and ran sooner than anyone else when she saw how overwhelming the force was. She picked up the pieces, and they never really fit back in the right places, but she carried on. She trembled through many of the fights after that.
She fought with allies to obtain The Last Breath, one of the piece of the Will. She fought to defend Artshall. She fought to retake Bastion. She inherited Petraea’s wealth and name, became Sydney Livy, and donated almost all of it to the Lower Boroughs. She helped convince Cardian dragons to return to Arvum, she helped fight back the final assault of Azazel’s forces, and she stood shoulder to shoulder with her allies and defended the Thinnest Point. She said her goodbyes to those she loved, and flew forth back to Cardia to help finish the Civil War alongside Cynara, to whatever outcome.
Sydney was often a coward beneath the mask she wore around most people, but she found the courage to fight for what she cared about and who she cared about when it mattered. Her highest skills were Brawl and Empathy.
My sincerest gratitude to all of the lovely story scenes over the years from Sydney’s dearest friends and companions (Yes, if you suspect I’m talking about you, I am!), for the many people who enthusiastically accepted her being an antagonistic brat at the start, and for the rest for being patient with her, to the people who Sydney never got close to but I sure as hell noticed and adored, and last but not least all the storytellers, with special kudos to Herja, Crawfish, and Apostate. All of you helped sculpt something super meaningful to me.
Now I’m going to go roll Composure at Daunting.
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I didn’t finish out the game but I did have two OCs who did pretty well.
Gianna’s staff-given secret was that she had a feeling there was magic in music. She was told repeatedly that she was not a spellsinger but basically she didn’t accept that and went HA HA I WILL SHOW YOU ALL. She saw a niche that wasn’t filled and made the Bard’s College, which was decently successful. Also, she sang magic but never Crossed Over or whatever because I wasn’t active at that point. Basically she sailed into Arx a street rat who had once impersonated nobility and gotten caught and then made herself rich and famous by sheer force of will and acting like she deserved it. Later, she came up with the insane idea to learn Wolf’s Song, and did that, too, though I didn’t get to take as many people along for that ride as I wanted. Sorry about that.
Once, she nominated herself for Radiant Whisper and got exactly one vote. She was the one who cast said vote, and it was hilarious.
When I made Oswyn I wanted him to have glasses but was told that was Not a Thing he could have. I had a line about squinting in his description stemming from that and when I asked for a secret it turned out he had bad eyesight because he could see magic (or was it magic’s potential?) and the poisoned Primum was why his eyesight was shitty. That is why he was miserable at recognizing people at a distance. Somehow, he became Archscholar. His greatest achievement in my opinion was basically making public libraries across Arvum. The Queen told him he was unusual because his soul tended to reincarnate with ability to do magic. He also never Crossed Over. This one time, Skald hugged him.
Oswyn once wrote to Copper asking to help the Red Wardens and she was like ‘lol who the fuck are you no thanks’. Well after she died, he became a Red Warden anyway. SUCK IT, COPPER!
I’m sure I didn’t fully figure out my secrets. Gianna would have been disappointed if she was some famous person’s reincarnation, though. The Bard’s College had a backstory where it had existed once before but been forgotten that I meant to dig further into. It was a very cool result of me being very lazy and just saying ‘uh I guess she finds a building that’s perfect because I don’t want to play out building something for a million years’.
Mostly I just did the best I could with characters I had figured weren’t ‘special’ for the majority of the time I played them, but the magic was inside me all along.
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With my schedule being basically the exact opposite of most GMed events I never really understood how to engage and develop my characters secrets.
Cicero started off with the ability to make steelsilk. One piece every month! This was back before resources so that was a pretty big deal though very slow burn. That ability got Eaten and replaced with the ability to see scary shadow things. That was neat, but the side effects of the ability resulted in Cicero being very unfun to play so I had him killed off. I wish I had stuck it out and figured out how to work with staff on adjusting it to make it a better experience.
Jhond’s secret was that the Smiling Shadows owed him a favor. Whenever I tried to engage with that one other PCs would say No, don’t do anything with that, and I foolishly listened and never did.
Jhond’s other secret was that he could sing better than Gianna. -
I haven’t played on the game in a couple of years, but here are my two OCs. I also played an FC, but none of the things that were interesting about him were related to his secret.
Hamish - Hamish’s secret is that he was a nox’alfar. Not the reincarnation of a nox’alfar or half-nox’alfar. He was just a nox’alfar. In ancient times he was a minor functionary in Calithex’s court who had done something gravely offensive to Death and she had cursed him to never see the Shining Lands, so his soul drifted from recently dead human to recently dead human, and he spent a thousand years doing that. Hamish (or rather, Wyll) would die in his current human life and then would wake up in the body of someone who had just fallen off of a roof or who had died of some disease. As a result he spent hundreds of years absolutely hating humans and hating the human experience. As he would later say to Symonesse, “We just smell all the time.” He spent years as peasant laborer, as a merchant, as a soldier, a noble, as a slave. He mostly avoided Forest Gumping his way through history, though it was later established that he’d been close to Caithness. And eventually he came to appreciate humanity and love the lives they live, to see each one of them as precious. In the life before Hamish, just after Brand had died, he was approached by Bringers who thought he might like to be the next rep for Silence since he’d have a good reason to want to break the Wheel. He said no thanks and spent the next few months being tortured. Managed to swallow his tongue to get out of it and woke up as Hamish Farmer. Decided to devote himself to Death, swore before the seraph of Sanctum, and became a mendicant priest until he was called to Arx. Thanks to Herja, who was so great in helping me feel like I was more involved, his background expanded as he started to remember what he’d done. Had a vision of coming disaster, was lead astray by a demon/fractal and decided he knew better than Calithex how to deal with it, and it all blew up in his face, resulting in two of Calithex’s guards being killed and their souls destroyed. In Arx he resumed some old friendships, having tea with Symonesse was always fun, met some people it turned out were relatives, and he took the wheel with the Harlequins. Whatever my ultimate relationship with Arx may have been, I’m proud of what we ended up doing with the Harlequins, and I’m glad to hear that they remained a fairly active org after I left. Symonesse once asked Hamish if he’d like to reincarnate in his original body after he died and he said he wasn’t sure. I’d like to think that either he ended up doing just that, or he finally got to the Shining Lands.
Gilroy - A far less liked character than Hamish, and I don’t blame anyone, though weirdly popular with that group of nobles who love slumming and hearing commoners say mean things about them. He was the latest incarnation of a soul that, whenever reincarnated, was always a legendary hero. Seraphs. Paladins. Knights. Lords Commander. Which leads to Gilroy, who was the son of the Baron of Castrum Trucido, whose brutality in the Southport War was notable even in that skirmish, and whose cruelty to his own people was only second to the cruelty he had toward his own son. After his preincarnations urged him to embrace heroism, he decided to beat his father to death with a fire poker, but didn’t finish the job before he had to go on the run. As such, Gilroy reviled the nobility, hated heroes and the notion of heroism, and was in general a dick to 90% of the people he met. Which got me several offers to be the protege of different Velenosa nobles, oddly enough. His refusal to acknowledge his destiny lead to his preincarnations actually speaking to him, though he ignored them since they were all so preachy. It was actually a lot of fun coming up with historical figures like Prince Donrall Marin, Dame Eleanor Fidante, the Carnation of Tor, Mother Merrows, the Salt Witch, etc. And posing flipping off people in the Hall of Heroes never failed to get a scene going. Fun fact: Gilroy came to me almost entirely fully fleshed out while watching Matilda with my kids when Danny Devito said, “Nobody ever got rich by being honest.”
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@Quibbler said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Oswyn once wrote to Copper asking to help the Red Wardens and she was like ‘lol who the fuck are you no thanks’. Well after she died, he became a Red Warden anyway. SUCK IT, COPPER!
yeah that sure sounds like her
fr fr
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@hellfrog You know what sounds like Copper? Pure awesomeness.
As a know-nothing player early on, and really for my short time there with that character, Copper was the absolute highlight of my experience with a small group of other Red Wardens. I still remember it with genuine fondness.
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@Snackness said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
She left Arx with Silver to do Hero Things. I’m not sure what happened after that, but if she’d been offered the chance to become a nox’alfar she 100% would have taken it.
I like to think she and Esoka are in Silver-ville together with Calaudrin and however many very loud children he and Esoka have at this point. Living it up.
Esoka’s secret centered on being Gloria-touched. Her speshul ability was extra fighting power when she fought demons but I only variably remembered to mention this to GMs so I don’t really know how often it was applied or what exactly it did mechanically. She always seemed to bash aite. She was also a reincarnate of someone but I never went far enough down the investigation path to figure out who. At some point I kinda decided it didn’t matter for her story, she was living her life in the now and got to have a hero-y end of her own where it felt like she was off to the next grand adventure.
I picked up a few rosters after that over the years with secrets I found variably interesting but they changed hands enough not to feel like mine to tell about (though the one who was a werewolf was meta-hilarious because on a previous char I’d encountered an OC CONVINCED werewolves were both the key to the metaplot and that Esoka was one, she was not). I thought about picking a character up just for the finale but ultimately I still feel a good about where I left my time on the game and have just enjoyed watching it barrel to a close. MUSHes don’t get endings a lot but the ones that do always loom larger and more like proper stories in my mind. Arx deserved that after all that time so I’m glad it was seemingly tied up in a cool way.
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Saverio was not in fact killed in a mysterious wolf attack.
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I guess one PC I actually can go into detail about that was pretty fun was Thomas, since he was my OC.
he was the younger brother of the very dead Marquis of Hawkmour, who had supposedly been assassinated by shavs but in reality had been killed by agents of Marcus and Malar. Thomas came to Arx seeking vengeance, became the House Sword, and after he learned the truth he quickly got involved with the Scales. Ironically, he was also the reincarnate of the captain of the guard of a nation that had been burninated by Cardia when they wiped out most of the Metallic Order, and had pretty vivid memories of dying horribly alongside another PC, who he was soul-bonded to (or they were soul twins or whatever? can’t remember exactly how that all worked), who just happened to be another agent of Marcus. good times!!
Thomas was a godawful spy and shenanigans ensued, but ultimately he wanted to be there when Marcus died. he also had managed to locate where Cardia was keeping Brass’s sword and deeply felt obligated to recover it for his family, even though basically everyone in his life told him how terrible and dangerous an idea that was.
unfortunately things got pretty hard for me in RL and I fell off the face of the earth, but I still look back on his story and the people involved with fondness, and I like to imagine it would have had a pretty epic conclusion.
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@glitch said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@hellfrog You know what sounds like Copper? Pure awesomeness.
As a know-nothing player early on, and really for my short time there with that character, Copper was the absolute highlight of my experience with a small group of other Red Wardens. I still remember it with genuine fondness.
me, too.
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@Evilgrayson I seriously considered trying to do the Paladin bit for Bhandn at one point (doing it on his own, to specific god(s)), but I could never quite justify it to myself, and I second-guessed the idea constantly as to whether it was even thematic if not heretical.
But I did want to do something involving Vellichor, but the reasons why now escape me.
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Volcica’s secret is that she is gasp a Deathspeaker! But she’s also a shaman, and that combo is v rare. Turns out she’s descended from the first Deathspeakers, way back in the Dance of Skulls. I never got around to looking into past lives, but she did end up as a Voice of Death and got to form a soulbond with Bat, the primordia, sooo. All in all? Pretty rad!
Auda was a half-Rex’alfar. Her parents dumped her at the Tragedy instead of killing her like they were ordered. Her mother was a knight of Solace and a White Steward, so that’s cool! Sapphire-as-Ruby saw her half-blood, and writ her into the Triarchy, and the rest is history! She also managed to become the Black Rose, and also the head of the Apothecary college, and also high up in the Shadow Court, all as ways to honor Ruby/Sapphire/Veil and Emerald/Blight. Her death was also pretty Knave, so that’s cool.
I dabbled on a few rosters when I took a few breaks from those OCs, but nothing really stuck other than Mailys for a while, pre-‘all of corsetina is smiling shadows’ era.
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@dvoraen said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@Evilgrayson I seriously considered trying to do the Paladin bit for Bhandn at one point (doing it on his own, to specific god(s)), but I could never quite justify it to myself, and I second-guessed the idea constantly as to whether it was even thematic if not heretical.
But I did want to do something involving Vellichor, but the reasons why now escape me.
Was it heretical? Absolutely. But Ray didn’t care, and Death wasn’t like most of the other gods.
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Saya’s secret was that she was an escapee from HG. A spellspinger (never specified), freed her and some others. Most of her memories weren’t her own, and a part of her desperately wanted to go back to Legion because having to make her own choices was TOO HARD and all these noble ladies wanted slippers with every single dress!
Ainsley had visions from Gloria from the first moment he picked up a sword. And his past life was a champion of Gloria who was exiled by Primeria.
Clover was a red warden and had saved a phoenix that some cultists were trying to sacrifice for primum.
Lys’ secret was that when she lied she got faster, stronger , and tougher. Which evolved as she tried to find her parents who were two Veil-touched people who accidentally scammed each other and then left her in the Lowers at an orphanage. Recently she found out that she had been Veil touched in her past life where Jade made her immune to writs and Plantium had her killed, which broke Nash and he refused to wield Birthright the first ever heirloom sword again. He peacebound it with the ribbon she wore in her hair.
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Okaaaaay. Hi, player of Apollo here!
Apollo’s original secret was that he stole stuff without intending to and absolutely hated it. Good lil Oathlander boy picking pockets? Lawd, the shame.
I spent the first couple years spinning wheels on this without a lot of traction, but late 2021 or early 2022, he had a vision as his hands got away from him: darkness, terrible pain in his hand, and someone talking about imprinting something on the soul. So he did what any determined lil shit would do and asked his wife to cut open his hand and look see if there was something there. WILD: there was. Not just on his soul, but on flesh and bone under his skin without any scar. Some kinda Avarice-lookin thing. A well-timed crit on a Mana roll during the exploratory surgery and he had a vivid memory of what happened:
In a past life, he stole something from Mortorius the Arisen, a lich who had somehow defeated death. Mortorius responded to the theft by removing all his flesh while he was still alive, taking his face, and presumably the mark he left was in there, too, unless that was a different past life. (Who knows.) I had a real moment of wtf, is splatterpunk!Arx a thing? but whatever. He had a dream afterward about what happened after he died: the ghosts were like shit son, you’re fucked up because you’re not supposed to carry your wounds and your agony into the afterlife but guess what. So like. He’d be in search of some Solutions for Healing the Soul, now that the bigger fish are fried, if anybody feels like a little RP or chat to let me know what that entails.
Later, because Apollo really and truly tried to empathize with everything and everyone, he got a lesson in autopsies from Lianne, just to feel what it’s like to be on the other end of a scalpel. Lianne wasn’t real confident that it was gonna yield any answers, but was happy to teach him. It did yield answers, which was a little victory for Apollo: though he had not yet crossed the threshold there, it felt like a step toward magic to learn someone’s motivations from long, long ago. Mortorius wasn’t trying to create some Future Herald of Avarice or anything (which was one of my favored theories for awhile). He just wanted to see if he could implant a compulsion. Just a tinkering scientist… with a wholeass disregard for pain, suffering, human life, etc.
So Apollo’s whole secret wasn’t really about how special he was. Kinda how special he wasn’t. Mortorius’ historical victims were generally described as ‘murders and disappearances in the Lowers’. No names.
Mortorius appeared again in his Crossing, which was cool (probably a vision/hallucination of, not the real deal, but … appropriate). He tied a lot of Apollo’s successes back to that mark (sure, why not: why wouldn’t someone like that see Apollo and his change in station as avariciously ambitious). That scene was lovely, tying up a lot of the history with a bow - and he Crossed when he cut out the stitches and the mark Mortorius had left, free of his stealing compulsion for the last few weeks of the game.
And then, very late game, someone logged in who I’d been tipped off years ago might have some kinda related secret, and we got to RP meaningfully about it right up to the end. It wound up being great story.
And I’m just gonna imagine Apollo and his new buddy-in-trauma sort out how to go murder someone who’s defeated death before. Pretty sure they’d have help aplenty.
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@discoarse I am the original player of an OC that received very similar secret. I ran around the grid for quite a while trying to find anyone who might have insight or a similar experience to share and fight back together. Can’t help but wonder if it was that PC you ran into and were able to bond with over it. Don’t want to his name here since he’s not my OC anymore but thanks for sharing this, kind of tied up a loose end for me, too, in a way
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Celine’s secret: A short while after The Tragedy, she awoke to noises in Sanctum. There weren’t any guards around and she followed the noises and, direct from her secret: ‘Her mother, Princess Marianne Valardin, stood over Celine’s older sister, a sword in the older woman’s hand now embeded deeply within the gasping Audrey’s stomach. Celine remembers screaming, the torches around the kitchen roaring to life seemingly in accordance to her disbelief, and her mother looking back at her. To this day Celine swears she could see a mark on Marianne’s forehead, glowing in fire, for a moment, before Audrey, still alive, stabbed their mother in the neck.’ Audrey got blamed for the murder of their mother and lost her nobility, there’s more to this, but that’s the player of Audrey to talk about, not me. Celine realised that something evil had infested the Oathlands, and over the following years infiltrated cults and hunted demons. I think she was a fledgling fire mage as when she lost her composure or panicked, things around her got incinerated. I didn’t manage to witness anyone’s ceremony to get the clue for learning magic so she never crossed over.
Part of her secret was that her mother had an affair with a Malardin of House Lenoir and showed him the secret passages beneath Sanctum, which were then used in The Tragedy. (SORRY VALARDINS!) She never told anyone about that and carried it as a guilty secret. It was that knowledge that drove her passion for hunting down and destroying The Malardin Brotherhood which, according to her secret, she excelled at.
Elsbetta’s secret was that her previous soul, Cassia, was beloved by the dragons, and in partuclar by Talar. If I read the clue I have on her correctly he and she were lovers. Cassia was the First Duchess of Westrock Rach and she was also known as The Lady of the Lost Star. There weren’t many clues to find on her as the original player dropped her way back when and she wasn’t played until I picked her up last year. Talar was slain by ‘King Diamond’ during the Reckoning and, believing his soul lost forever, she built a lighthouse on Westrock Reach so others, if not he, would be able to find their way in this world or the next. Oh yes, the Cardians were hunting Elsbetta according to clue #3084, but I think they were hunting quite a lot of the playerbase at one time or another!
Timezones being a thing, and my own being really incompatible to staff GM’d events, I wasn’t able to join in metaplot events and missed out entirely on the final crazy wind-up weeks. I’ve lived the last few weeks vicariously on the sidelines reading all the logs, and shedding a few tears for a couple of characters. Shout out to Mabelle and her bees.
Thanks for the great times, those I’ve played with.
