The Arx Secrets Thread

[Roz]

@Rowan I think it’s more likely that you got bad info. Cleansing the primum was about cleansing the primum in Arvum, not in individuals. It may have made people’s primum feel a little better as an additional effect, but it wasn’t related to making individuals prepared to do magic; it was about healing the land.

[glitch]

@Roz Not sure if there was another kind of cleansing, but for what Rowan might be thinking, if it was bad info, it was certainly going around. I definitely remember a cleansing thing being said to be necessary to do magic and only happened to a person by another person who had it done to them. Which seems to be pretty distinct from just a general cleansing of the land.

[Smile]

So there was a point when we had planned for it to be one of the steps on the way to learning magic. I know it wasn’t Apostate’s initial plan but when people got into the cleansing rituals, I think it was added to the steps to crossing the threshold thing since it did help PCs define what was important to their character. Technically ‘designing an anima ritual’ was also supposed to be a step before crossing the threshold. Toward the end, though we sort of fast-tracked everything.

ETA: Tehom had added a step by step process to the admin interface but I don’t think that’s going to be implemented exactly to Arx 2.

[Polk]

I forget the exact terminology, but Ari Corsetina was secretly the human pawn of some great old one. He was saved from the pirates who attacked the ship he served on, and threw him overboard, by a tentacle monster who saved him and then fought on his behalf to give him command of the ship.

The way I interpreted this, and played it, was to say look, Ari’s just a regular guy. He’s a man with a young family, who has to spend long periods away from them to provide for them. He’s a good, loyal guy who sacrifices of himself for others.

He’s not some dashing action hero. I’d say he’s comparable with a guy like Finn in Star Wars. He doesn’t have the special powers, but he’s dragged into all of this, and it tests him.

He eventually gets an inkling that Mirari Corsetina, his daughter, is mixed in with this, that Belladonna Pravus is mixed in with all of this. That everyone he works for, and fights for, and loves and respects, is benefiting from these deep dark powers.

And that power also wants him, and he can feel is watching him with its possibly-malevolent desires, every time he goes out to sea.

What do you do if you’re Ari in this spot? Your wife is dead. Your daughter is all you have left of your old life, and she’s somehow come through everything to a position of influence, comfort, and success. Are you really going to do anything that could possibly take that from her? Of course not.

Or Belladonna. The Pravus family was reaching new heights, and they’ve been very good to you. Are you going to betray them, or undermine them? No!

So what do you do if you’re Ari? You gratefully accept the Knighthood you are given. You quietly watch proudly your daughter do her thing. You serve your lords and ladies.

And when the burden of being watches, and courted, and groomed for some inhuman purpose is too much, you drink.

Mirari’s adopted sister kept stores of wine for trade. Ari frequently broke into those, because it was all he could do.

When he died, he died sacrificing himself at sea, in battle, for family and lords. The beings watching him lashed out when he died, but it was too late. He was at peace, having served those he cared for with all he had.

[Rhamnious]

Could someone please go through Lucita’s truesong’s The Final Verse and tell me what “Cloak, crystal, sorrowed, shadow’s glee
And old gray fox makes two sides three” and down means!

[Evilgrayson]

@Rhamnious Looks like the Accords from here. Red Wardens, Prismatic Order, Triarchy, Smiling Shadows, and True Lyceum. Two ‘good’ orgs, two ‘bad’ orgs, and one ‘neutral’.

[brent]

Alaric’s big secret was already pretty well known by the time I began playing him (he and Brianna had a certain kid named Alarion and the whole reason Carlotta and Sherrod went on the Night’s Grove trip with him was to figure out what to do about it in relative privacy) and if that wasn’t enough, it actually got aired out at the Assembly of Peers by Marcus the one time. (Marcus getting banned from the next AoP for a made-up procedural violation was 100% Alaric retailiating for that, lol.) That said, he did know straight from the drop that neither Alarion nor Alaric III were dead because they didn’t show up in the Shining Lands to yell at him while he was under the Exsilium Noctis, though the latter also wasn’t a secret for too too much longer (lotta other people got visions about that). His other other secret was also not really much of a secret in that he needed soul healing not to go cuckoo for cocoa puffs again, so no offing the NPC Queen since she was the only one around who could do it! (This was also instituted so as not to a) not let the alliance with the Nox backslide since the plot had turned out going this way and b) not touch off the mother of all IC/OOC catfights by having a single PC King in play. I was 100% on board with this.) In a lot of ways Alaric’s real big secret was that the admin staff never expected anyone to get him fixed in the first place, hee.

Ferrando’s secret was that he was a Red Warden from the get go but started play on the outs with Wolbrand (the Red Warden version of the secretly evil NPC placeholder org leader, though Wolbrand wasn’t really capital-E evil just so much as a big jerk who wasn’t very concerned about keeping his operatives alive IIRC) due to a mission gone bad. Said mission involved Ferrando using a one-time-use magic healing widget to save the life of a conwoman captured by the Smiling Shadows after killing the Shadows, instead of leaving her to die and tailing the Shadows back to their hideout like Wolbrand wanted. Said healed conwoman took up a new identity as Selene after recovering, ergo Ferrando got himself hired at the Whisper House to keep an eye on her if the Smiling Shadows went after her again. This plot hook never actually went anywhere since there was never an active Selene before I got Alaric, and after that if I had a scene with Selene it was as Alaric because he kind of took over all my playtime. According to Apos’ AMA this was all tied into the death-of-Genevieve plotline.

I only ever made one OC, Vayne, but I didn’t really find a groove playing him and gave him up to the roster after two months. He was fairly successful as far as donated-roster characters go (he got promoted to Legate!), which was neat to see. Anyhoo his secret was that his reflection in a mirror would occasionally serve as an informant or otherwise give him advice when he was alone.

Strictly speaking I was also the first Jan Kennex but other than getting her initial starting skills set up I barely got out of her @rs period because a few days after I took her up the Alaric apps opened up. Whatever her secret was, later players would have had to set it up.

I also picked up Fairen for the last month (sort of hilarously the only character I ever @org/disafavored as Alaric because of complaints about that one player who could not have a civil IC disagreement with aaaaaanybody to save his friggin life), whose nominal secret was that he was haunted by the ghost of his older sister Hianora, who maintained her control-freaky advice tendencies after death. Though Fairen’s real secret was basically that ex-Metallic Adept and current Seal-keeping-Baalphrigor-snoozing Nickel was hiding out in his basement (which strictly speaking was an extensive network of caverns) back home under the Leaholdt, since House Leary was basically founded primarily to give the surviving remnants of the Nickel Guard the political authority to raise an army and use it to keep Obsidian cultists out of the territory surrounding the caverns and such.

[TNP]

Anyone know Jasher’s?

I played him for a while a long time ago. If I recall right, he had the blessing of some god/dess or something but I can’t remember the details and I never fully learned the point of it all or what it really meant. Now I’m curious.

[DrQuinn]

Sabella’s first secret was agreed to be one of the worst on the game by just about anyone who ever heard about it because it didn’t make a lot of sense. It was that she knew the Black Rose Mummers were actually the thieves guild and she wanted to become one of them because she thought they were so cool and something something get them to work for Grayson? This on the surface seemed a somewhat interesting thread, if incredibly unlikey (the cons outweighed the pros like crazy), until you realized that the people running the group also hated all nobility. Like actively sought to bring it down and hated that she was trying to be an actress which made my first month there very, very difficult because it was me trying to scene with people who would inevitably just tell me how stupid I was, how awful Grayson was, how they weren’t ever going to let me into the play actions, and it was a disaster that made me dread RPing. An early thing that I think was dropped was that the Mummers would actively recruit children from the Tragedy to be their informants and get them placed as wards with noble families but if that ever went anywhere I wasn’t apart of it because again, totally stonewalled due to being a princess that was barely tolerated to be hanging around.

Add to that early on at the one Mummers meeting I was ever invited to, Sapphire tried to kill everyone and I ended up being like why would she EVER want to be associated with this group?? Like she never went into the Lowers past the park after that happened because she was traumatized by it.

So her secret was changed to that she saw the good in everyone, which was much cooler and fit the PC far better.

Korka was the reincarnation of Caithness and that was VERY fun to play. She didn’t like what the Whispers became and was always annoyed that she had Caithness at the edge of her mind. Did she become an inquisitor because she wanted to or because stupid Caithness wanted to keep defending the Compact? Delving into that with @Herja was probably the most fun I had on the game.

Gretchen was also a great character who the Leer was in love with or something. He’s send her notes and she’d provide the smiling shadows with poisons. She was a ton of fun to play though with Tessa dying nearly immediately after I picked her up, I was the only active Moore for awhile and it was very isolating. She had an alternate identity: Maggie Moins who ran the black market for rare goods in the Shadow Court and I like to think she didn’t end up dying due to the frost elves that got the other Moores but spent her days making a fortune as Maggie selling her snake oil to the public and magic items on the side, taking all those nobles that looked down on her and her family for all they were worth.

Adora was a smiling shadow. I’m sure that shocks everyone since she was such a nice carpenter. But that org was dead, dead when I was there (if you did a last 20 on the channel it took you to the start or Arx and that was two years in). No one ever talked to me or reached out and I never even knew where the hideout was. She was a ton of fun to play because it was during the age where a bunch of nobles loved being insulted by commoners and she was always game. Also she was great at making stuff so a good creative outlet for crafting. She liked to send people things unasked for and then demand a ludicrous payment. 9 times out of 10 they’d just pay and it was hilarious.

My biggest regret was not having the time for Sabella to convince the other highlords to take power away from the Crown. The assembly of peers was mostly for show where the other Houses could vote, but then Alaric basically did what he wanted regardless. I REALLY wanted to make it so the Crown was just one vote that only counted just as much as the other Houses and would’ve traded the other highlords being okay with Pravus becoming a Great House for it. I even had clues saying that they used to have that sort of power! But then Liara was made highlord and she had zero interest in pursuing that and the Pravus thing exploded. But it was some fun politicking RP while it lasted!

[helvetica]

Lumen had a killer demon tricked into being trapped in the body of a little bunny rabbit. He horribly devoured her enemies.

Lark’s original secret involved being targeted for assassination by the Smiling Shadows. Copper saved her, and she was inducted as a Red Warden recruit. She became a cell leader and much later, the High Warden. Her secondary secret developed through gameplay. She ended up with a talent for deciphering patterns in weaves and identifying their weak points for other Wardens to attack.

[sao]

@helvetica Lark being incisive like that is SO GOOD

[Tez]

@DrQuinn omg, that first Sabella secret sounds SO challenging. A good example of how things that could sound fun can fall apart on contact with players. I’m glad you were able to get in changed eventually.

[DrQuinn]

@Tez It seems like later players were able to run with that second secret (I’m sure they were able to uncover more about it than I ever did), so it was definitely a good swap!

[Omen]

@TNP That was my interpretation as well. I pursued it for a while on him in 2022 the best I could but it ultimately stagnated. I’d love to know the meaning behind it, too!

[Narson]

Preston’s secret was nice and easy. He was the bastard son of Fawkuhl Valardin, the Dominus of the Faith (legate at the time). His mother was no-one important, but tried to blackmail Fawkuhl using Preston. Fawkuhl had her killed, and presented Preston as an abandoned orphan and took him into the rectory.

Archeron’s was that when he was a ranger with Grayson during his exile, he saw something during the War of the Silence. His fought a guy with a vinewhip, hence his scars, and Archeron managed to kill the man, but was left wounded and the last survivor. While there, lying wounded in the woods, he saw something - or rather didn’t, as there was a hole in his memory. But at night, he had nightmares about that moment and would wake up just before the thing’s face was revealed.

I discovered that he was being hunted by Fade, which is why he generally avoided the woods after that. He ultimately got Fade off his back by making a pragmatic deal with the Abyssal lot. And at the end of the game, Archeron gathered the Tydes and weathered out the second reckoning with his cousin Reveka, using a blood candle she sent him for his wedding to summon her.

[Roz]

@Omen Yeah, from having RPed with several Jashers over the years, I’m pretty confident that he was godtouched by Mangata, but I don’t know if there were more details.

[Narson]

@Snackness said in The Arx Secrets Thread:

ETA: @Narson NOT DEAD!

Just abandoning Preston for /years/ without writing then. Harumph.

I did almost do another journal entry to Esoka and Thena before the end.

[kalakh]

@Evilgrayson said in The Arx Secrets Thread:

@Rhamnious Looks like the Accords from here. Red Wardens, Prismatic Order, Triarchy, Smiling Shadows, and True Lyceum. Two ‘good’ orgs, two ‘bad’ orgs, and one ‘neutral’.

It’s this, yeah.

It occurs to me I can break open those songs now, so I think I’ll do that. Hi! I wrote Lucita’s last three True Songs (they were all action results), which ended up being some combination of riddles of current events, and vague predictions of future ones. The upside and downside of Arx’s setting was that destiny and fate were, canonically, not a thing, so any prophecies amounted to very shaky versions of Christmas Yet to Come, an ‘if events continue as they are now’ sort of thing, but even more precarious. This meant GMs weren’t constrained to following them, but it also meant players might be kinda disappointed if predicted events didn’t happen. I tried to be very, very vague with anything that wasn’t just a version of ‘this is happening right now’, even if I had a good sense of where a plot was going, so that it might be interpreted however which way. I’m not sure I was very successful at that, but that was the intent.

I really loved writing Arx clues, and I really, really liked seeing folks run with these, so I hope they ended up being entertaining at the least.

They’re really long, so I’m going to break up the songs into individual posts and not post them all at once.

[Wizz]

@Tez said in The Arx Secrets Thread:

A good example of how things that could sound fun can fall apart on contact with players.

I’m curious to hear more secrets that just Didn’t Work, for reasons that weren’t just like “oh well everyone involved idled out years ago.” I remember a few people vaguely griping about them in the old Arx thread on MSB back in the day and would find it really interesting to hear the full details about what made them so challenging when it came to actual play versus the intent when they were written.

[kalakh]

Keep in mind, I wrote these as deliberately vague in a lot of places, these were just my original intent as to what was being alluded to.

[There’s Nothing to Worry About] (25 Rating)

I could have named this The First Verse. HINDSIGHT.

When tower falls and shakes the world
Metal speaks, red cloak unfurled
Dragon thunders, Children act
And hardened hearts must make a pact

This is about Copper’s death and events immediately following.

Tower falls = the clock tower
Metal speaks = Brass’s proposal
Red cloak unfurled = Ashe’s proposal
Dragon thunders = Cardia’s proposal
Children act = the Undying Empire’s proposal

And hardened hearts must make a pact = this is referring to the Accords, which was a rather fraught treaty being negotiated between various secret orgs at the time, with the purpose of more thoroughly binding Ruin through very hard alliances. It was still being negotiated when I came on staff, so this was a lot of hard work between PCs, but it was ultimately successful.

With Serpent severed, Griffons rise
Bloodied water draws all eyes

Thrax Civil War, Alaric III has renewed interest in returning to Arvum (though this didn’t ultimately end up happening, it was one of the potential plots for a small timeskip after the Horned God died for a little bit).

But ancient vengeance lies in wait
And more than swords must battle Fate

Just referring to the Horned God plot about to shift into overdrive after the civil war ended, which sets the stage for the rest of this:

Princess of Trees and Queen of Wood,

Mia and Samantha were both Daughters of the Horned God, Mia had been recognized as queen by the Sylv’alfar of Last Oak, Samantha, sadly, never could keep a player in the last years.

Whispers lead where he once stood

There was an attempt to find a spot where the Horned God had sacrificed previous Daughters. A bunch of vengeful ghosts revealed where it was, and Volcica brought a chunk of the altar he used to Harrow Hall.

Bitter thorns seek to atone
No daughter of his should stand alone

The poor, poor Thornweaves. This refers primarily to Oberion.

Speakers, seek what once was lost
But singers must accept the cost
All but two, their souls must try
One is dead, and one must die

This whole thing is about the Long Song of the Venandi plot, which had some fits and starts due to real life kicking a number of people repeatedly in the face. The ultimate meaning of the lines more or less stayed true, though: the spellsingers who wanted to sing Wolf’s Song had to “try their souls”, which was originally going to be a harrowing series of dangerous tests, but ultimately ended up being some really significant personal sacrifices.

“One is dead and one must die” is referring to Sunaia (who was the reincarnation of the first Mor’ral to fall to Legion), and Shard (who was really close to being semi offscreened with a near/fake death). They both had khati souls, which meant they didn’t have to jump through the same hoops to be able to sing the Song. So, yeah, that means Sunaia could have potentially been one of the singers.

When Traitor takes once dead queen’s crown
Shadows of white must strike him down
If tasks complete, and duties end
Beware, Red Queen is not your friend

Of all the stanzas I wrote for these songs, this one I’m least happy about, because I was basically just throwing stuff at the wall without having any idea what might happen there. It’s referring to the Horned God taking Alarice’s crown and very, very vaguely to the White Stewards, who had at that point wanted to change their whole purpose around to actually helping the Compact rather than serving the whims of Aetheris. Red Queen here could have referred to Ruby (the most obvious interpretation) or Monica Thrax (who had been reincarnated and who was the one who originally took Alarice’s crown for herself, leading to it being lost). None of this ended up being a thing aside from the Horned God taking the crown though.

Wardens stand, look to the north
Watch those claws he’s sending forth
If hungry eyes should break the wall
One will die to save them all

Wardens refers to the Red Wardens, and the wall to the Castle of Yesterday. At this point the Horned God’s attention had been drawn to the Castle of Yesterday through the Mor’ral (specifically, Tolv), as being both Copper’s castle and probably full of primum. The idea was the castle might eventually be attacked by the Horned God, and the potential death was Irony, one of Copper’s adopted dragon kids who wanted really badly to be a heroic knight, who might sacrifice herself to save her siblings and the other Red Wardens if things went poorly.

Ultimately, the attack did happen when Helena Thornweave rolled up, but the dragon kids were shuffled off right as it was happening (the folks who showed up to defend the castle got a letter about how they’d bought time or something afterward), and you could argue the death ended up being Petraea Livy instead.

Mad mage’s kin and choices three
He will not forget what used to be
Watch gem of light and Queen of Black
Lest one of these may not turn back

This refers to Skald’s kids (Aleksei, Redrain) and the people of the Third Choice, which were the various Ravashari clans. I’d originally intended to do a lot more with the Ravashari, with the Horned God’s forces hunting them down for sacrifice and out of revenge. This would have involved an attack on Riva, but also a lot of hunting of the various non-Compact affiliated groups that PCs would have had the choice to try to save, etc.

Gem of light and Queen of Black refers to Prism and Queen Triscali, respectively. That’s…complicated. Prism effectively split her soul off into parts for a while, so her various reincarnations had their own minds/bodies, but were still connected. During the attack on Sungreet, where there was a thrall rebellion, Triscali turned up to help with the fight, and ended up being poisoned by the Horned God, and slowly corrupted, which also put the other Prism pieces in danger (so, Prism, Esera).

Weeping sister seeks release
And only song can bring her peace
Find hollowed throne, and there inside
Sing your soul where she once died

This was for Tikva’s secret, where the Lianhan was effectively a ghost attached to her sister’s reincarnated soul, suffering an desperate to finish the song that killed her so that she could move on to the Wheel. It’s probably the most straightforward thing in these songs, it happened pretty much exactly like this, with people finding A’kioh’s throne room and Tikva doing some soul singing.

In forest dark, a mother’s fall
And only one will hear that call
Choose their bonds or treachery
Or kill them all, and set them free

This refers to the Witchwood and the Mor’ral. It was specific to an individual PCs secret, though the Witchwood story ended up being solved in a different way. Originally the PC’s mother was meant to be the voice reaching out to try to get him to come to the Witchwood and free the Mor’ral (human and otherwise), the role was eventually shifted to being a named NPC in the Mor’ral backstory. Very vague possibilities of freeing the Mor’ral: break their chains, trick them somewhere they wouldn’t be a danger to other people, or just kill them off.

Where kings are broken, tyrants reign
A would-be God will do the same

The Horned God ultimately planned to carry out his final step at Harrow Hall.

Moon blood drips, wolves have no doubt
All know their time will soon run out

The red moon would signal shit getting real. Originally the Primasen of the Wolves might have played a bigger part here, but there were plenty of “wolves” already involved that could guess at what that meant.

Heed these words, this warning take,
When slaver dies, all chains must break.

When we rolled into endgame, I ended up more or less a player rather than a staffer in the involvement. Writs being broken and vanishing as a possibility from the Dream, however, was a pretty long planned thing for if the Horned God was killed (something we figured was much, much more likely than not, though it wasn’t set in stone). This was one of the few things I knew was still going to be a factor going in, though I didn’t know the details of how it would eventually shake out.